Gut microbiota and potential serum metabolites biomarkers of pregnant woman for preeclampsia

Abstract

Background

The pathogenesis of preeclampsia (PE) remains unclear, but the interaction between intestinal flora and PE has been attention in recent studies. Several studies have shown that imbalanced intestinal flora plays an important role in the inducement of PE.

Purpose

The potential correlation among intestinal flora, metabolites, and fetal growth restriction was explored by integrating data and analyzing neonatal growth. The study is hoped to provide references for subsequent studies.

Methods

A comparison between the intestinal flora of healthy pregnant women and pregnant with PE was conducted using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Subsequently, the feces, serum and umbilical cord blood collected from healthy pregnant women and those with PE were analyzed using global untargeted metabolomics to identify differences in metabolites.

Results

The results showed that Bifidobacterium, Chryseobacterium, Eubacterium, Pravotella and Bacteroides are the core species associated with many metabolites. Normal-birth weight had a negative correlation with the abundance of raclopride, Phe-Gly-O and Lys-Phe-OH showed a positive correlation with Phosphonate and Lys-Gly. Simultaneously, these core metabolites showed a strong correlation with other growth indices (BPD, AC, FL). In summary, the imbalance of intestinal flora in pregnant women may alter the abundance of the core metabolites, thereby affecting the neonatal growth.

Conclusions

A global untargeted metabolomics was performed on the samples including feces, serum, and umbilical cord blood. The integrated multi-omics analysis revealed the interaction among intestinal flora, metabolites and the clinical indices, demonstrating the potential effects of the imbalance of intestinal flora on neonatal growth in the pregnant women with PE.