malnourished children have gut bacteria that are immature compared with healthy children researchers find healthstudies offer hope for malnourished children healthcreditkim hedgewashington university school of medicinemarch 7 2016starving children have gut bacterial colonies that are immature compared with those of healthy children and their mothers breast milk may lack sugars that can nourish the right bacteria researchers have found those children may not grow even when they are fed nutritious foodmouse studies published recently in science and cell suggest that the problems can be fixedresearchers at washington university school of medicine in st louis gave young germfree mice the gut bacteria from healthy and malnourished malawian children all of the mice were raised on a malawian diet of cornmeal vegetables peanuts and kidney beansthe mice with the microbes from malnourished children failed to grow and were less healthy over all the scientists foundbut mice eat one anothers feces and when the two types of mice were caged together the malnourished ones picked up the bacteria of the healthy ones and grew stronger on the same dietin this battle of good microbes versus bad good triumphed said dr jeffrey i gordon a genome biologist at washington university and leader of the researchdr gordon also worked with a team of scientists in california finland and malawi who found that the breast milk of mothers of malnourished children often lacked sugars with sialic acid which is important in growththe scientists refined cows milk to concentrate similar sugars and fed it to mice that were undernourished because they had been given the gut biota of a malnourished child the mice grew more muscle bone and fat and had healthier brain and liver functionsthe researchers then replicated their results in piglets whose metabolism more closely resembles that of humans