Omouma: a prospective mother and child cohort aiming to identify early biomarkers of pregnancy complications in women living in Qatar

Abstract

Background Pregnancy is governed by multiple molecular and cellular processes, which might influence pregnancy health and outcomes. Failure to predict and understand the cause of pregnancy complications, adverse pregnancy outcomes, infant’s morbidity and mortality, have limited effective interventions. Integrative multi-omics technologies provide an unbiased platform to explore the complex molecular interactions with an unprecedented depth. The objective of the present protocol is to build a longitudinal mother-baby cohort and use multi-omics technologies to help identify predictive biomarkers of adverse pregnancy outcomes, early life determinants and their effect on child health. Methods/design : One thousand pregnant women with a viable pregnancy in the first trimester (6–14 weeks of gestation) will be recruited from Sidra Medicine hospital. All the study participants will be monitored every trimester, at delivery, and one-year post-partum. Serial high-frequency sampling, including blood, stool, urine, saliva, skin, and vaginal swabs (mother only) from the pregnant women and their babies, will be collected. Maternal and neonatal health, including mental health and perinatal growth, will be recorded using a combination of questionnaires, interviews, and medical records. Downstream sample processing including microbial profiling, vaginal immune response, blood transcriptomics, epigenomics, and metabolomics will be performed. Discussion It is expected that the present study will provide valuable insights into predicting pregnancy complications and neonatal health outcomes. Those include whether specific microbial and/or epigenomics signatures, immune profiles are associated with a healthy pregnancy and/or complicated pregnancy and poor neonatal health outcome. Moreover, this non-interventional cohort will also serve as a baseline dataset to understand how familial, socioeconomic, environmental and lifestyle factors interact with genetic determinants to influence health outcomes later in life. These findings will hold promise for the diagnosis and precision-medicine interventions.

Microbial Dysbiosis Tunes the Immune Response Towards Allergic Disease Outcomes

“…With the increased incidence of allergic diseases, a better understanding of the developmental events that leads to immune sensitization against otherwise innocuous environment antigens is a key to the development of rational intervention strategies. The hygiene hypothesis, first put forward over 30 years ago, has now been expanded to include the effects of microbial dysbiosis with the aid of next generation sequencing techniques [205], leading to a much more robust view of how early life exposure to a diverse array of microbes is important for the development of the immune system and the establishment of a homeostatic relationship with our environment [204,241], especially at the key barrier organs associated with atopy, namely the skin, airways, and gut. The initial premise of the hygiene hypothesis, that a reduction in exposure to viral and bacterial infections during childhood was responsible for the induction of default atopic Th2 responses, has now been largely disproven [199,201,202].…”

Does “all disease begin in the gut”? The gut-organ cross talk in the microbiome

“…Additionally, advances in microbiome research have led to the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for managing pregnancy-related conditions. Biomarkers derived from maternal microbiota profiles may offer valuable insights into the risk of preterm birth, preeclampsia, and other pregnancy complications, enabling early intervention and personalized care (Kumar et al 2021 ).…”

Infections and Pregnancy: Effects on Maternal and Child Health

“…Additionally, it may lead to future therapeutic strategies to improve maternal health and prevent vertical transmission of pathogens. Advanced, cutting-edge statistical models, as well as high-throughput molecular multi-omics techniques, can be used to integrate various datasets for assessing their role in biological processes ( Kumar et al., 2021b ). It should be noted that numerous specific microbial therapies, such as bacteriophage or narrow-spectrum therapies that kill the specific pathogen without affecting other health microbes, are being developed and proving to be effective ( Kumar et al., 2018 ; Brives and Pourraz, 2020 ).…”