Bacterial profile of meconium of neonates born at National Referral Hospital Cipto Mangunkusumo, Jakarta, Indonesia

Microbial colonization of a neonate’s gastrointestinal tract has significant perinatal and lifetime health consequences, with some clinical outcomes that have been linked to differences in the diversity and composition of gut microbiota. The effort to engineer intestinal ecosystem has led us to preserve the cultivable commensal microbiota. Here we investigated the association of cultivable bacterial diversity of neonates meconium from Indonesian National Referral Hospital Cipto Mangunkusumo (NRHCM) with mode of delivery and feeding patterns, as well as hyperbilirubinemia. We performed a cross-sectional study of meconium and clinical data collected from 14 Indonesian neonates born at NRHCM. Culture-dependent identification of bacterial isolates was conducted by performing simultaneous microbiological and molecular 16S rDNA PCR-Sanger sequencing methods. Phylogenetic tree and principal components analysis were employed to determine the bacterial profile and their association with clinical characteristics and outcomes. Cultivable bacterial profile indicates the predominance of Firmicutes (84,41%), with an abundant population of Staphylococcus (53.24%) with top three most significant population present are, i.e. S. hominis (12.99%), S. epidermidis (11.68%), and S. haemolyticus (10.39%). Bacterial diversity was associated with mode of delivery which showed that vaginal route populated by lower diversity of cultivable bacteria but by fewer opportunistics one than that of cesarean, with Staphylococcus hominis dominates the population, whereas with feeding patterns showed that the exclusive breast-fed was most populated by Staphylococcus, whereas non-exclusive one shared the same proportion of Staphylococcus and Bacterioides. While, non-hyperbilirubinemia group showed more abundant and diverse Staphylococcus than that of the opposite group.