Used nasogastric feeding tubes from neonates contain infant-specific bacterial profiles

Nasogastric feeding tubes (NG-tubes) from neonates contain potentially pathogenic bacteria. Using culture-based techniques, we have previously determined that the duration of use did not impact the colonization of the nasogastric tubes.In the present study, we performed 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing based analysis of 94 used nasogastric tubes. We assessed whether the same strain persisted in the NG-tube collected from the same neonate. Therefore, we used whole-genome sequencing to determine the identity of colonizing bacteria from NG-tubes collected at different time-points from the same infant.We found that the most commonly occurring Gram negative bacteria were Enterobacteriaceae, Klebsiella and Serratia, while the most common Gram positive bacteria were staphylococci and streptococci. The microbiota of the NG-feeding tube was overall infant-specific, rather than dependent on duration of use. Furthermore, we determined that re-occurring species from the individual infant were from the same strain. Interestingly, the strains occurred in more than one infant.This suggests that bacteria found in NG-tubes of neonates may derive from the stomach of the infant, but it also suggests that infants were colonized with the same bacteria from a common source in the environment.