Pregnancy & Gut Bacteria

Pregnancy Changes Gut Bacteria

By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today

Published: August 06, 2012

Reviewed by Dori F. Zaleznik, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston and Dorothy Caputo, MA, BSN, RN, Nurse Planner

Action Points

• A study characterizing gut microbiota during pregnancy found a marked shift in the third trimester that would ordinarily be associated with the metabolic syndrome, but in this case appear to help support fetal growth.
• Note that diet, antibiotics, presence or absence of gestational diabetes, or prepregnancy BMI did not influence the shift in gut microbiome from first to third trimester.

Gut microbiota is "profoundly altered" by pregnancy and marked by changes that would normally be associated with metabolic syndrome, researchers found, but these changes could be beneficial in expectant women, they suggested.

Indeed, when gut bacteria from women in their third trimester were transferred to germ-free mice, the animals developed signs of metabolic syndrome, including weight gain, abnormal glucose metabolism, and inflammation, according to Ruth Ley, PhD, of Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, and colleagues./.../