The composition and stability of the vaginal microbiota of normal pregnant women is different from that of non-pregnant women
By Roberto Romero, Sonia S. Hassan, Pawel Gajer, Adi L. Tarca, D. Fadrosh, Lorraine Nikita, Marisa Galuppi, R. Lamont, P. Chaemsaithong, J. Miranda and 2 more. Microbiome, 2014
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This study was undertaken to characterize the vaginal microbiota throughout normal human pregnancy using sequence-based techniques. We compared the vaginal microbial composition of non-pregnant patients with a group of pregnant women who delivered at term. A retrospective case–control longitudinal study was designed and included non-pregnant women (n = 32) and pregnant women who delivered at term (38 to 42 weeks) without complications (n = 22). Serial samples of vaginal fluid were collected from both non-pregnant and pregnant patients. A 16S rRNA gene sequence-based survey was conducted using pyrosequencing to characterize the structure and stability of the vaginal microbiota. Linear mixed effects models and generalized estimating equations were used to identify the phylotypes whose relative abundance was different between the two study groups. The vaginal microbiota of normal pregnant women was different from that of non-pregnant women (higher abundance of Lactobacillus vaginalis, L. crispatus, L. gasseri and L. jensenii and lower abundance of 22 other phylotypes in pregnant women). Bacterial community state type (CST) IV-B or CST IV-A characterized by high relative abundance of species of genus Atopobium as well as the presence of Prevotella, Sneathia, Gardnerella, Ruminococcaceae, Parvimonas, Mobiluncus and other taxa previously shown to be associated with bacterial vaginosis were less frequent in normal pregnancy. The stability of the vaginal microbiota of pregnant women was higher than that of non-pregnant women; however, during normal pregnancy, bacterial communities shift almost exclusively from one CST dominated by Lactobacillus spp. to another CST dominated by Lactobacillus spp. We report the first longitudinal study of the vaginal microbiota in normal pregnancy. Differences in the composition and stability of the microbial community between pregnant and non-pregnant women were observed. Lactobacillus spp. were the predominant members of the microbial community in normal pregnancy. These results can serve as the basis to study the relationship between the vaginal microbiome and adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Subfields: Epidemiology, Microbiology, Molecular Biology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f685db6c28018def1faac10309aee9bdb5ccfca0
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In Epidemiology
In Microbiology
In Molecular Biology
- Susan P. Holmes
- Paul J. McMurdie
- Benjamin J. Callahan
- T. Sampson
- S. Mazmanian
- E. Costello
- Rob Knight
- Magdalena Malinowska
Citations in the corpus
- The infant microbiome development: mom matters (2014, positive): “gasseri) as a function of gestational age and found that the vaginal microbiota became less diverse [23,24].”
- Temporal and spatial variation of the human microbiota during pregnancy (2015, background): “Another potentially important difference between our study and previous work, especially when considering patterns related to Gardnerella abundance, is the use of different PCR primers (18, 25).”
- The Central Nervous System and the Gut Microbiome (2016, background): “The maternal microbiome is distinct and dynamically changing during pregnancy compared to other periods in female life (DiGiulio et al., 2015; Koren et al., 2012; MacIntyre et al., 2015; Nuriel-Ohayon et al., 2016; Romero et al., 2014a).”
- The Vaginal Microenvironment: The Physiologic Role of Lactobacilli (2018, background): “Prematurity Pregnancy is characterized by increased vaginal Lactobacillus dominance due to heightened estrogen-stimulated glycogen deposition and subsequent breakdown to lactic acid (Figure 1) (6, 12, 17).”
- The human microbiome (2017, background): “During pregnancy, vaginal communities change as a function of gestational age, increasing in Lactobacillus species and decreasing in anaerobic species as pregnancy progresses [49].”