JAMA. Published online September 29, 2015. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.11563
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After Elise and Todd Jackson’s son, Elijah, was born 14 weeks prematurely in 2002, he spent 7 months in the neonatal intensive care unit at Rockford Memorial Hospital in north central Illinois. Although Elijah is now an active and healthy 13-year-old, because of medical problems stemming from his prematurity, as an infant he was given a feeding tube, underwent surgery to close the duct between his pulmonary artery and aorta, and needed a tracheotomy to help him breathe.
“I literally moved to Rockford to be with him,” said Elise Jackson, whose home is 45 miles away in Elgin, Illinois. “I didn’t want to leave his bedside.”
The exact cause of Elijah Jackson’s preterm birth was never determined, as is often the case with premature infants. Some well-known links with prematurity include urinary tract and vaginal infections, preeclampsia, diabetes, and conception using assisted reproductive technologies. But in a recent study, researchers at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Stanford University explored a lesser-known frontier: the relationship between preterm birth and the microbial composition of the vagina and other sites in the body.
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