A healthy diet high in fiber can reduce the risk of preeclampsia

A healthy, high-fiber diet is generally recommended, but new research shows that it may be even more important during pregnancy to promote the well-being of both mother and child.

The herbal bacteria are broken down in the intestine by bacteria into factors that influence the immune system.

Researchers from the Charles Perkins Center at the University of Sydney, Barwon Infant Study of Deakin University, Monash University, James Cook University and University Australia's national team have collaborated to study the role of these metabolic products of intestinal bacteria during pregnancy.

The study's lead author, Professor Ralph Nanan, said the simple recommendation of "eating real food, mostly plants and not too much" could be the most effective primary prevention strategy for some of the most serious affections of our time.

"The intestinal bacteria and the mother's diet seem to play a crucial role in promoting a healthy pregnancy," said Professor Nanan, of the University of Sydney's Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney. center Charles Perkins.

Posted today in Nature Communications, the study found that, in humans, the reduction of acetate levels, mainly due to intestinal fiber fermentation, is badociated with preeclampsia, a common and serious pregnancy-related illness.

Preeclampsia affects up to 10% of pregnancies and is characterized by high blood pressure, protein in the urine and severe swelling of the mother. It also interferes with the immune development of the child in the uterus, and some data suggest a link with higher rates of allergies and autoimmune diseases later in life.

The current study has shown that preeclampsia affects the development of an important immune organ of the fetus, the thymus, located just behind the sternum.

The fetuses of preeclamptic pregnancies had a thymus much smaller than the children of healthy pregnancies.

The cells normally generated by the thymus, called T-cells (thymic-derived cells), especially those badociated with the prevention of allergies and autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, also remained lower in infants after preeclampsia, even four years after childbirth.

The mechanisms of acetate on the developing fetal immune system were then examined in separate experiments involving mice that showed that acetate was essential for the development of thymus and fetal lymphocytes.

Together, these results have shown that promoting specific metabolic products of intestinal bacteria during pregnancy could be an effective way to maintain a healthy pregnancy and prevent allergies and autoimmune diseases later in life.

They may also partly explain the rapid rise in allergies and autoimmune diseases, as Western diets are increasingly dominated by highly processed foods that are very low in fiber.

"Further studies are urgently needed to understand how we can better target this system to reduce the growing burden of immune-related diseases in the modern world," said co-author Peter Vuillermin, co-leader of the Barwon Infant Study, a major cohort of births. study conducted by the Barwon Health Children's Health Research Unit in collaboration with the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and Deakin University.

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Disclosures: The authors state that they have no competing interests. The NMR facilities at James Cook University were funded in part by the Australian Research Council (LE120100015, LE160100218).