The vaginal microbiome plays an important role in a woman’s reproductive health, and may influence the outcome of preterm birth complications, suggests a new study published in mSystems, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
How Important Is Vaginal Health For Pregnancy Complications?
Globally, preterm birth complications are the leading cause of death for children under the age of 5. Not everyone faces the same risk, though: In the United States, roughly 10% of pregnancies lead to preterm birth, but for Black women, that likelihood is 14%.
After analyzing data from a large study on pregnant women in North Carolina, researchers found that participants with a high abundance of Lactobacillus crispatus were less likely to have a preterm birth. Researchers also stratified their findings by race and found evidence for the protective effect of L. crispatus in both White and Black populations.
‘The protective effect of the vaginal microbiome in reducing the risk of preterm birth differs between White and Black women populations.’
“Lactobacillus bacteria are common in the vaginal microbiome, but the specific species that dominate may affect outcomes”, said microbiologist and lead author Shan Sun, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC).
Is Diverse Vaginal Microbiome Good Or Bad?
Some species are more or less protective. They found a lower abundance of L. crispatus, and a higher abundance of L. iners in the vaginal microbiome of Black women.
In the gut microbiome, greater diversity is often associated with better health. But the opposite seems to be true in the vaginal microbiome. Higher diversity may dampen the protective effects of L. crispatus in Black women, but further evidence is needed to prove that hypothesis.
Previous studies have investigated connections between the vaginal microbiome and preterm births, Sun said, but have largely been limited by low numbers of participants.
The new findings are based on data on 464 White women and 360 Black women enrolled in the Pregnancy, Infection, and Nutrition (PIN) Study, based at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Between 1995 and 2000, the study enrolled more than 3,000 women and compiled data on a wide range of health, environmental, and social factors.
What remains unclear, is whether L. crispatus is itself protective or is a consequence of some other factor that lowers the risk for preterm birth.
Researchers are also hoping to use PIN data to probe the racial disparities in preterm outcomes. There’s still quite a bit to be done to describe the nature of the microbiome during pregnancy and what influences outcomes.
Source: Medindia
