A Metagenomic Approach to Characterization of the Vaginal Microbiome Signature in Pregnancy

By Kjersti Aagaard, Kevin P. Riehle, Jun Ma, Nicola Segata, Toni-Ann Mistretta, Cristian Coarfa, Sabeen Raza, S. Rosenbaum, I. B. Van den Veyver, Aleksandar Milosavljevic and 4 more. PLoS ONE, 2012

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While current major national research efforts (i.e., the NIH Human Microbiome Project) will enable comprehensive metagenomic characterization of the adult human microbiota, how and when these diverse microbial communities take up residence in the host and during reproductive life are unexplored at a population level. Because microbial abundance and diversity might differ in pregnancy, we sought to generate comparative metagenomic signatures across gestational age strata. DNA was isolated from the vagina (introitus, posterior fornix, midvagina) and the V5V3 region of bacterial 16S rRNA genes were sequenced (454FLX Titanium platform). Sixty-eight samples from 24 healthy gravidae (18 to 40 confirmed weeks) were compared with 301 non-pregnant controls (60 subjects). Generated sequence data were quality filtered, taxonomically binned, normalized, and organized by phylogeny and into operational taxonomic units (OTU); principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) of the resultant beta diversity measures were used for visualization and analysis in association with sample clinical metadata. Altogether, 1.4 gigabytes of data containing >2.5 million reads (averaging 6,837 sequences/sample of 493 nt in length) were generated for computational analyses. Although gravidae were not excluded by virtue of a posterior fornix pH >4.5 at the time of screening, unique vaginal microbiome signature encompassing several specific OTUs and higher-level clades was nevertheless observed and confirmed using a combination of phylogenetic, non-phylogenetic, supervised, and unsupervised approaches. Both overall diversity and richness were reduced in pregnancy, with dominance of Lactobacillus species (L. iners crispatus, jensenii and johnsonii, and the orders Lactobacillales (and Lactobacillaceae family), Clostridiales, Bacteroidales, and Actinomycetales. This intergroup comparison using rigorous standardized sampling protocols and analytical methodologies provides robust initial evidence that the vaginal microbial 16S rRNA gene catalogue uniquely differs in pregnancy, with variance of taxa across vaginal subsite and gestational age.

Subfields: Epidemiology, Microbiology, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a8dfe1073e8a99268ba2acfb0915aaae7b0faf95

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Citations in the corpus

The composition and stability of the vaginal microbiota of normal pregnant women is different from that of non-pregnant women (2014, methodology): “Previous studies have used a crosssectional approach [213] and sparse sampling [212].”
Impact of antibiotics on the human microbiome and consequences for host health (2022, background): “Also, the vaginal microbiota during pregnancy has been reported to change— represented by the high bacterial load with high Lactobacillus abun- dance, low richness, and diversity compared to the vaginal microbiota of nonpregnant females (Aagaard et al., 2012; Freitas et al., 2017).”
The composition of the gut microbiota throughout life, with an emphasis on early life (2015, background): “The vaginal microbiota has a low diversity, being mainly composed of lactobacilli (36).”
Role of the microbiome in human development (2019, background): “The gut 25 and vaginal 26 maternal microbiota change with gestation, and whether or not these changes have adaptive value for the mother or baby is still unknown.”
Temporal and spatial variation of the human microbiota during pregnancy (2015, neutral): “Two longitudinal studies (16, 19) and two cross-sectional studies (14, 15) also used culture-independent methods to characterize vaginal communities sampled from one or more trimesters.”
Mom Knows Best: The Universality of Maternal Microbial Transmission (2013, background): “neonatal upper GI microbiota after vaginal delivery [73].”
The infant microbiome development: mom matters (2014, positive): “johnsonii) had higher prevalence during later gestational ages [23].”