The placenta was long thought to be sterile, but a new study finds nucleic acid signatures of multiple species in a pattern similar to that in the oral cavity.

PlacentalMicrobiome

K. Aagaard, J. Ma, K. M. Antony, R. Ganu, J. Petrosino, J. Versalovic, The Placenta Harbors a Unique Microbiome. Sci. Transl. Med. 6, 237ra65 (2014).

A report in Nature by Katia Moskvitch is open access. 

The research report in Sci Trans Med is not open access, but the abstract is below.

Humans and their microbiomes have coevolved as a physiologic community composed of distinct body site niches with metabolic and antigenic diversity. buy Aciphex online Buy Aciphex cheap Aciphex no prescription The placental microbiome has not been robustly interrogated, despite recent demonstrations of intracellular bacteria with diverse metabolic and immune regulatory functions. A population-based cohort of placental specimens collected under sterile conditions from 320 subjects with extensive clinical data was established for comparative 16Sribosomal DNA–based and whole-genome shotgun (WGS) metagenomic studies. Identified taxa and their gene carriage patterns were compared to other human body site niches, including the oral, skin, airway (nasal), vaginal, and gut microbiomes from nonpregnant controls. We characterized a unique placental microbiome niche, composed of nonpathogenic commensal microbiota from the Firmicutes, Tenericutes, Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Fusobacteria phyla. In aggregate, the placental microbiome profiles were most akin (Bray-Curtis dissimilarity <0.3) to the human oral microbiome. 16S-based operational taxonomic unit analyses revealed associations of the placental microbiome with a remote history of antenatal infection (permutational multivariate analysis of variance, P = 0.006), such as urinary tract infection in the first trimester, as well as with preterm birth <37 weeks (P = 0.001).

Discover more from The Evolution and Medicine Review

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading