Danish Researchers Find Thousands of New Viruses in Baby Diapers

Healthy - Scientists in Denmark are trying to find out the origins of a number of human diseases. To answer this question, they observed the baby's diaper that was used.

Quoting the WebMD page, the researchers found 10,000 types of viruses in diapers. Many of these viruses have never been identified before.

"In particular we are trying to decipher how certain gut bacteria in infancy can protect you from chronic disease later in life," said researcher Shiraz Shah, PhD, in a blog post describing the research, published this month in Nature Microbiology.

Shah and colleagues at the Copenhagen Prospective Studies for Asthma in Childhood recruited mothers during pregnancy. The mothers agreed to enroll their babies in the study after birth.

Used diapers were collected when the baby was 1 year old, and the children are now 12 years old. Diaper analysis is the first step in research, which has the long-term goal of identifying causes of chronic inflammatory diseases such as asthma, eczema and allergies.

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The researchers were surprised by how many viruses they found.

"Our current hypothesis is that the viral load is increased in the infant's gut because the immune system is immature," Shah wrote.

The next analysis will examine diapers from the time the baby is 1 week and 1 month old to see if there are 10,000 strains of the virus at that young age. After that, the researchers will see if certain viruses are able to protect children from diseases such as asthma or ADHD.

The children in the study will continue to contribute information through their used diapers, and researchers will continue to look at the link between the gut and serious disease.

"We believe that many chronic diseases begin in childhood even if symptoms appear later in life," said Shah.

"For now, at least we know that having a gut full of viruses must be a natural part of being a baby."