Gut microbiota changes in pre-eclampsia, abnormal placental growth and healthy pregnant women

Abstract Pre-eclampsia (PE) is a condition of high blood pressure which usually concurrent with proteinuria in pregnancy. PE complicate the management of both maternal and fetal health and contribute the most of adverse pregnancy outcome, but the mechanism underlying the development of PE remains unclear. In this study, we performed a case-control study to compare the gut microbiota of PE, abnormal placental growth (APG) and health pregnant women and analyzed the potential pathogenic role of gut microbiota in PE progression. Although the clinical pathophysiological state did not affect the bacterial diversity, the compositions of the gut microbiota were significant altered in both PE and APG groups when compared with health pregnant woman. At phylum level, TM7 was significantly increased in woman with APG and, although with no significance, the percentage of Proteobacteria were extended especially in patient with PE. Heterogeneity was observed at genus level, especially in the genus with positive LDA scores suggested the stage-dependent manner effort of gut microbiota to the development of PE. The beneficial bacteria lactobacillus was markedly depleted in PE and APG group but only correlated with blood pressure (BP) and proteinuria levels in PE group and, different lactobacillus species shown different contributions (otu255 and otu784 were significant related to PE and APG separately). Our results indicated that shifts in the gut microbiota might occur from the early stages of the development of PE, which is of possible etiological and therapeutic importance.