Changes of gut mycobiota in the third trimester of pregnant women with preeclampsia

Abstract

Objective

Studies recently acknowledged that the fungal community in the gut plays an important role in many inflammatory diseases of noninfectious origin. but the role of gut fungi in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia (PE) remains unknown.

Methods

We performed a case-case–control study to compare the gut mycobiota of PE, pregnancy with chronic hypertension (PCH), and the normal group (Normal pregnancy group without any underlying disease) by internal transcribed spacer sequencing. In addition, LC/MS was used to explore the relationship between the fecal metabolites and gut mycobiota.

Results

Compared with the PCH and the normal group, α diversity (represented the species abundance in a single sample) of mycobiota were lower in the PE group, but there was no statistically significant difference among these three groups. However, Linear discriminant analysis Effect Size (LEfSe) analysis found 3 differentially abundant fungal taxa in PE group when compared with the normal group. The gut metabolites of PE patients were significantly different from PCH and the normal group. Choline metabolism molecule glycerophosphocholine was the most discriminant metabolite between PE and the normal group. Correlation analysis found that Candida spp.was positively correlated with glycerophosphocholine which increased in PE.

Conclusion

We found that gut mycobiota changed in the third trimester of pregnant women with preeclampsia.

Keywords:

• Gut fungal
• preeclampsia
• glycerophosphocholine
• Candida spp.

Authors’ contribution

We thank HZ and YS designed the study, YS and CL performed the experiments. QH and WZ analyzed data. HZ wrote this manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author (CL). The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported in part by Women and Children’s Hospital of Chongqing Medical University (Grant number 2020YJQN02).