Pre-pregnancy weight, gestational weight gain, and the gut microbiota of mothers and their infants

Abstract

BackgroundRecent evidence supports that the maternal gut microbiota impacts the initial infant gut microbiota. Since the gut microbiota may play a causal role in the development of obesity, it is important to understand how pre-pregnancy weight and gestational weight gain (GWG) impact the gut microbiota of mothers at the time of delivery and their infants in early life. In this study, we performed 16S rRNA gene sequencing on gut microbiota samples from 169 women 4 days after delivery and from the 844 samples of their infants at six timepoints during the first 2 years of life. We categorized the women (1) according to pre-pregnancy body mass index into overweight/obese (OW/OB, BMI ≥ 25) or non-overweight/obese (BMI < 25) and (2) into excessive and non-excessive GWG in the subset of mothers of full-term singleton infants (N = 116). We compared alpha diversity and taxonomic composition of the maternal and infant samples by exposure groups. We also compared taxonomic similarity between maternal and infant gut microbiota.ResultsMaternal OW/OB was associated with lower maternal alpha diversity. Maternal pre-pregnancy OW/OB and excessive GWG were associated with taxonomic differences in the maternal gut microbiota, including taxa from the highly heritable family Christensenellaceae, the genera Lachnospira, Parabacteroides, Bifidobacterium, and Blautia. These maternal characteristics were not associated with overall differences in the infant gut microbiota over the first 2 years of life. However, the presence of specific OTUs in maternal gut microbiota at the time of delivery did significantly increase the odds of presence in the infant gut at age 4–10 days for many taxa, and these included some lean-associated taxa.ConclusionsOur results show differences in maternal gut microbiota composition at the time of delivery by pre-pregnancy weight and GWG, but these changes were only associated with limited compositional differences in the early life gut microbiota of their infants. Further work is needed to determine the degree to which these maternal microbiota differences at time of birth with OW/OB and GWG may affect the health of the infant over time and by what mechanism.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s40168-017-0332-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Association between gut microbiota composition and glycoalbumin level during pregnancy in Japanese women: Pilot study from Chiba Study of Mother and Child Health

“…The differences between previous studies and the present study might be due to different ethnicities and dietary habits of the study populations. Although pregestational weight, BMI and gestational weight gain reportedly correlate with microbiota composition during pregnancy, we did not detect any correlation of microbiota composition with these variables. The participants showed relatively small pregestational BMI values, which might contribute to the differences between previous reports and the present results.…”

Prenatal and postnatal determinants in shaping offspring’s microbiome in the first 1000 days: study protocol and preliminary results at one month of life

“…Numerous factors are known to affect the diversity and architecture of the infant's gut microbiome during the first year of life, such as maternal factors (e.g. Body Mass Index and weight fluctuation) before pregnancy [11], gestational exposures [12][13][14][15] (e.g. maternal lifestyle, weight gain, pathophysiology conditions, supplements use, antibiotics exposure, pollutants exposure), mode of delivery [16,17] and type of feeding [18], triggering a gut microbiome dysbiosis [19].…”

“…Excessive weight gain during pregnancy is known to be one of the maternal factors affecting the gut microbial composition of the newborn to delivery to adulthood [11] and previous human studies showed that children born to women who were affected by obesity or overweight during pregnancy exhibited significant variations in gut microbiome composition at the different stages of life, when compared with those from normal-weight mothers [20,21].…”

The role of the brain–gut–microbiota axis in psychology: The importance of considering gut microbiota in the development, perpetuation, and treatment of psychological disorders

“…There is a growing consensus that maternal GM may have long‐term health consequences for the child (Stanislawski et al, ). It is therefore reasonable to suggest that vertically transmitted GM may act as a mechanism for intergenerational predisposition to psychological disorders.…”

“…There is a growing consensus that maternal GM may have longterm health consequences for the child (Stanislawski et al, 2017).…”