[Quantitative study of the faecal flora of breast- or bottle-fed neonates (author's transl)]

A blind qualitative and quantitative study of the aerobic and anaerobic faecal flora of two groups of newborn babies was carried out. One group of babies was breast-fed, while the second group was bottle-fed. In both cases the first established bacterial flora was essentially made of Escherichia coli and group D Streptococci (S. faecalis or S. bovis). On the sixth day of life a difference between he bacterial flora of the two groups was noticed, Bifidobacterium spp. was more frequently observed in the breast-fed babies. However the number of Bifidobacterium was lower than the dominant flora.