Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA.
Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, 460 Medical Center Drive, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA.
Sci Rep. 2024 Nov 6;14(1):26880. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-77560-x.
The first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent health mandates resulted in significant disruptions to daily life, creating a period of heightened psychosocial stress in myriad aspects. Understanding the impact of this period on pregnant individuals' bacteriomes is crucial as pregnancy is a period of heightened vulnerability to stress and its sequelae, anxiety and mood disorders, which have been demonstrated to alter gut microbiome composition. In a prospective cohort study (N = 12-26) conducted from February 2019 to August 2021, we examined psychometric responses and rectal microbiome swabs from pregnant individuals. Full-length 16 S rRNA sequencing followed by calculation of diversity metrics and relative abundance values were used to interrogate fecal microbiome community composition across pandemic groups. Distinct shifts in bacterial diversity and composition were observed during early to late pregnancy in the pandemic group, including lower relative abundance of pathogenic and lesser-known taxa. However, distribution of stress and depressive symptoms did not significantly differ from the pre-pandemic period while the correlation between stress and depressive symptoms dissipated during the pandemic. Our findings suggest that living through the COVID-19 pandemic altered the gut microbiome of pregnant individuals, independent of perceived stress.
新冠疫情的头两年以及随后的卫生部门强制要求对日常生活造成了重大干扰，在众多方面造成了高度的社会心理压力。了解这一时期对孕妇细菌组的影响至关重要，因为怀孕是一个对压力及其后果（焦虑和情绪障碍）高度脆弱的时期，已证实这些因素会改变肠道微生物组的组成。在一项前瞻性队列研究（N=12-26）中，我们从 2019 年 2 月至 2021 年 8 月检查了孕妇的心理测量反应和直肠微生物组拭子。使用全长 16S rRNA 测序，然后计算多样性指标和相对丰度值，以研究大流行期间的粪便微生物组群落组成。在大流行组中，从早期到晚期妊娠期间观察到细菌多样性和组成的明显变化，包括致病性和鲜为人知的分类群的相对丰度降低。然而，压力和抑郁症状的分布与大流行前时期没有显著差异，而压力和抑郁症状之间的相关性在大流行期间消失。我们的研究结果表明，经历新冠疫情改变了孕妇的肠道微生物组，而与感知到的压力无关。
