Human placenta has no microbiome but can contain potential pathogens.
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Authors
Cook, Emma
Charnock-Jones, Stephen
Publication Date
2019-08Journal Title
Nature
ISSN
0028-0836
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Volume
572
Issue
7769
Pages
329-334
Language
eng
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Physical Medium
Print-Electronic
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
de Goffau, M., Lager, S., Sovio, U., Gaccioli, F., Cook, E., Peacock, S., Parkhill, J., et al. (2019). Human placenta has no microbiome but can contain potential pathogens.. Nature, 572 (7769), 329-334. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1451-5
Abstract
We sought to determine whether preeclampsia, delivery of a small for gestational age infant or spontaneous preterm birth were associated with the presence of bacterial DNA in the human placenta. Here we show that there was no evidence for the presence of bacteria in the large majority of placental samples, from both complicated and uncomplicated pregnancies. Almost all signals were related either to acquisition of bacteria during labor and delivery or contamination of laboratory reagents with bacterial DNA. The exception was the detection of Streptococcus agalactiae (Group B Streptococcus), where non-contaminant signals were detected in ~5% of samples collected prior to the onset of labor. We conclude that bacterial infection of the placenta is not a common cause of adverse pregnancy outcome and that the human placenta does not have a microbiome, but it does represent a potential site of perinatal acquisition of Streptococcus agalactiae, a major cause of neonatal sepsis. An Author Correction to this article has been published; see journal website.
Keywords
Placenta, Humans, Streptococcus agalactiae, Pregnancy Complications, Infectious, Sepsis, DNA, Bacterial, RNA, Ribosomal, 16S, Biopsy, Pregnancy Outcome, Delivery, Obstetric, Cohort Studies, Reproducibility of Results, Sequence Analysis, DNA, Pregnancy, Infant, Newborn, Female, Obstetric Labor Complications, Male, Metagenomics, DNA Contamination
Sponsorship
MRC (MR/K021133/1)
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) (RG52380)
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) (unknown)
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) (146281)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1451-5
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/293656
Rights
All rights reserved