Over the last few decades, research has exploded on the “gut microbiome,” meaning what types of (and how many) bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms are living in the intestines. In non-pregnant populations, links have been found between the gut microbiome and many diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic conditions like diabetes and obesity. Researchers on this paper did several studies to try to better understand the role of a pregnant person’s gut microbiome in how likely they were to develop preeclampsia. In a stool analysis collected in late pregnancy, results showed that the gut microbiome from stool samples of patients with preeclampsia were significantly different from those who did not have preeclampsia. Researchers then took those stool samples and transplanted them into rats with pre-existing preeclampsia (this is called a fecal transplant). The rats with the transplanted stool from the patients with preeclampsia went on to have worse preeclampsia symptoms during their pregnancy. The rats with stool from patients without preeclampsia showed less severe preeclampsia symptoms.
Take home message: This group of studies supports the role of our gut microbiome on preeclampsia risk. Future studies may explore changing the gut microbiome (for example by antibiotics, probiotics, or prebiotics) to help prevent preeclampsia.
Link: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.122.320771
Citation: Jin J, Gao L, Zou X, Zhang Y, Zheng Z, Zhang X, Li J, Tian Z, Wang X, Gu J, Zhang C, Wu T, Wang Z, Zhang Q. Gut Dysbiosis Promotes Preeclampsia by Regulating Macrophages and Trophoblasts. Circ Res. 2022 Sep 2;131(6):492-506. doi: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.122.320771. Epub 2022 Aug 11. PMID: 35950704.
Each quarter, our team of researchers reviews the most current studies related to hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and selects those studies they feel will be of greatest interest to our community to summarize.
Special thanks to our volunteer research team, who under the leadership of Dr. Elizabeth Sutton, make Research Roundup possible: Alisse Hauspurg, MD Felicia LeMoine, and MD Jenny Sones, PhD, DVM.
Comparative effectiveness of prophylactic strategies for preeclampsia: a network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials Finding strategies for preventing preeclampsia is a top priority in...
Masked Pregnancy-Associated Hypertension as a Predictor of Adverse Outcomes Pregnant women who have risk factors for preeclampsia may be advised by their health care provider to monitor their...
Preeclampsia Prevention by Timed Birth at Term In this study, researchers looked at different ways to find out if a pregnant woman might get preeclampsia at term (>37 weeks) and when would be...
Polygenic prediction of preeclampsia and gestational hypertension All humans have near-identical DNA sequences across the estimated 6 billion-letter code that makes up the human genome. However, slig...
Noninvasive preeclampsia prediction using plasma cell-free RNA signatures. Messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a molecule that contains the instructions to tell cells how to make proteins. mRNA is m...