Bio-Sciences R&D Division, TCS Research, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Pune, 411013, India.
Sci Rep. 2017 Nov 23;7(1):16145. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-16352-y.
Preterm birth is a leading cause of global neonate mortality. Hospitalization costs associated with preterm deliveries present a huge economic burden. Existing physical/biochemical markers for predicting preterm birth risk are mostly suited for application at mid/late pregnancy stages, thereby leaving very short time (between diagnosis and delivery) for adopting appropriate intervention strategies. Recent studies indicating correlations between pre/full-term delivery and the composition of vaginal microbiota in pregnant women have opened new diagnostic possibilities. In this study, we performed a thorough meta-analysis of vaginal microbiome datasets to evaluate the utility of popular diversity and inequality measures for predicting, at an early stage, the risk of preterm delivery. Results indicate significant differences (in diversity measures) between 'first-trimester' vaginal microbiomes obtained from women with term and preterm outcomes, indicating the potential diagnostic utility of these measures. In this context, we introduce a novel diversity metric that has significantly better diagnostic ability as compared to established diversity measures. The metric enables 'early' and highly accurate prediction of preterm delivery outcomes, and can potentially be deployed in clinical settings for preterm birth risk-assessment. Our findings have potentially far reaching implications in the fight against neonatal deaths due to preterm birth.
早产是导致全球新生儿死亡的主要原因。与早产分娩相关的住院费用带来了巨大的经济负担。现有的预测早产风险的物理/生化标志物大多适用于中/晚期妊娠阶段，因此留给采取适当干预策略的时间非常短（从诊断到分娩）。最近的研究表明，孕妇的预/足月分娩与阴道微生物组的组成之间存在相关性，这为诊断开辟了新的可能性。在这项研究中，我们对阴道微生物组数据集进行了全面的荟萃分析，以评估常用多样性和不平等指标在早期预测早产风险方面的效用。结果表明，来自足月和早产结局的女性的“第一孕期”阴道微生物组在多样性指标上存在显著差异，表明这些指标具有潜在的诊断效用。在这种情况下，我们引入了一种新的多样性度量标准，与已建立的多样性度量标准相比，它具有显著更好的诊断能力。该度量标准能够实现早产分娩结果的“早期”和高度准确预测，并有可能在临床环境中用于早产风险评估。我们的研究结果在预防因早产导致的新生儿死亡方面具有潜在的深远意义。
