Gut microbiota changes in patients with hypertensive disorders and gestational diabetes in early pregnancy: a...

The potential impact of metabolic diseases during pregnancy is of increasing interest. This prospective cohort study aimed to analyze the gut microbiota changes of pregnant women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and hypertensive disorders in pregnancy (HDP) before the 20th week of gestation.

Feces were collected before 20 weeks of pregnancy, where the microbiota was analyzed for using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. QIIME2 and R packages (v3.2.0) were used for sequence data analyses. The diversity and composition of the microbiota of GDM, HDP and healthy pregnancy groups were further compared by following up the pregnant outcomes. A logistic regression model was applied to assess the diagnostical value of gut microbiota for GDM and HDP.

Compared with healthy pregnancies, HDP group showed a higher abundance of Actinobacteria, and a lower abundance of Bacteroidetes at the phylum level (p < 0.05). In contrast, Bacteroidetes abundance was increased in GDM group. Otherwise, Synergistes showed a higher abundance in both GDM and HDP group at the family level. The further results displayed that the abundance level of Actinobacteria may maintained important implications for the adverse development of GDM and HDP women. Subsequently, the logistic regression model showed that the area under the curve for HDP and GDM groups were 0.77 and 0.69, respectively.

Altered gut microbiota before 20 weeks of gestation precedes clinical signs of GDM and HDP, in which the species and composition of Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Synergistes may be associated with clinical symptoms of the metabolic diseases in pregnancy. This study provides new research strategies to focus on the changes in gut microbiota of early pregnant women.