Replication and Refinement of a Vaginal Microbial Signature of Preterm Birth
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Preterm birth (PTB) is the leading cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality. Previous studies have suggested that the maternal vaginal microbiota contributes to the pathophysiology of PTB, but conflicting results in recent years have raised doubts. We conducted a study of PTB compared to term birth in two cohorts of pregnant women: one predominantly Caucasian (n=39) at low risk for PTB, the second predominantly African American and at high-risk (n=96). We profiled the taxonomic composition of 2,179 vaginal swabs collected prospectively and weekly during gestation using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Previously proposed associations between PTB and lower Lactobacillus and higher Gardnerella abundances replicated in the low-risk cohort, but not in the high-risk cohort. Using state-of-the-art bioinformatic techniques, we improved our taxonomic resolution to the species and subspecies level, revealing that Lactobacillus crispatus was protective against PTB in both cohorts, while Lactobacillus iners was not, and that a subspecies clade of Gardnerella vaginalis explained the genus association with PTB. Patterns of co-occurrence between L. crispatus and Gardnerella were highly exclusive, while Gardnerella and L. iners often co-existed at high frequencies. We argue that the vaginal microbiota is better represented by the quantitative frequencies of these key taxa than by classifying communities into five community state types. Our findings extend and corroborate the association between the vaginal microbiota and PTB, suggest that previous conflicting results may reflect the different risk profile of women of black race, offer a more robust signature of PTB, and demonstrate the benefits of high-resolution statistical bioinformatics.
Description
| Type of resource | software, multimedia |
|---|---|
| Date created | July 2017 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Callahan, Benjamin J |
|---|---|
| Author | DiGiulio, Daniel G |
| Author | Goltsman, Daniela A |
| Author | Sun, Christina |
| Author | Costello, Elizabeth K |
| Author | Jeganathan, Pratheepa |
| Author | Biggio, Joseph R |
| Author | Wong, Ron J |
| Author | Druzin, Maurice L |
| Author | Shaw, Gary M |
| Author | Stevenson, David K |
| Author | Holmes, Susan P |
| Author | Relman, David A |
Subjects
| Subject | pregnancy |
|---|---|
| Subject | prematurity |
| Subject | preterm birth |
| Subject | microbiome |
| Subject | vaginal microbiota |
| Subject | 16S rRNA gene |
| Subject | Lactobacillus |
| Subject | Gardnerella |
| Genre | Dataset |
Bibliographic information
| Related Publication | Callahan BJ, et al. (2017). Replication and refinement of a vaginal microbial signature of preterm birth in two racially distinct cohorts of US women. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1705899114 |
|---|---|
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/yb681vm1809 |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-SA).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Callahan BJ, et al. (2017). "Supplementary Data from article: Replication and Refinement of a Vaginal Microbial Signature of Preterm Birth." Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/yb681vm1809.
Collection
Reproducible Research Support for Statistics of the Microbiome
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- Contact
- susan@stat.stanford.edu
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