LANSING (WLNS):
MSU Assistant Professor Sarah Comstock has been granted $70,000 to research how antibiotic use during pregnancy can affect antibiotic resistance in mothers and their infants.
The award comes from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation.
The research goal is to determine if some antibiotic exposures cause more resistance in mother/infant pairs than other antibiotic exposures.
Medical providers will be able to use the information from the study to choose antibiotics or treatment regimens that minimize the risk of antibiotic resistance during critical stages of life.
“Antibiotic resistance is one of the most pressing human health problems of our time,” Comstock said. “This grant will enable us to understand the scope of the antibiotic resistance problem in the population of pregnant women and infants in the state of Michigan.”
Comstock’s team has collected biospecimens from pregnant women and their infants and continued access to new samples from participants.
Participants were recruited from three birth cohorts during pregnancy/gestation and will be followed through early infancy.
The research project also includes: Dr. Yelena Davis (Spectrum Health), Dr. Joel Maurer (Sparrow Hospital), Dr. Rosemary Olivero (Spectrum Health), Dr. Rebecca Schein (Sparrow Hospital) and Dr. Lixin Zhang (MSU Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics)
