Placentas delivered by pre‐pregnant obese women have reduced abundance and diversity in the microbiome [journal]

Journal

The FASEB Journal - April 2021

Authors

Paula A Benny, Fadhl M Al‐Akwaa, Corbin Dirkx, Ryan J Schlueter, Thomas K Wolfgruber, Ingrid Y Chern, Suzie Hoops (Ph.D. student), Dan Knights (professor), Lana X Garmire

Abstract

Maternal pre‐pregnancy obesity may have an impact on both maternal and fetal health. We examined the microbiome recovered from placentas in a multi‐ethnic maternal pre‐pregnant obesity cohort, through an optimized microbiome protocol to enrich low bacterial biomass samples. We found that the microbiomes recovered from the placentas of obese pre‐pregnant mothers are less abundant and less diverse when compared to those from mothers of normal pre‐pregnancy weight. Microbiome richness also decreases from the maternal side to the fetal side, demonstrating heterogeneity by geolocation within the placenta. In summary, our study shows that the microbiomes recovered from the placentas are associated with pre‐pregnancy obesity.

Link to full paper

Placentas delivered by pre‐pregnant obese women have reduced abundance and diversity in the microbiome

Keywords

bioinformatics, computational biology