The vaginal microbiome transmits the stress of pregnancy

Medicine

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

/ Igor Borodin, stockadobecom

Baltimore – Epidemiological studies show that stress during pregnancy can lead to neuropsychological disorders of development in children. Studies on animals in Nature Neuroscience (2018, doi: 10.1038 / s41593-018-0182-5) attribute this in part to the vaginal microbiome.

There is ample evidence that stress is – and here is in addition to mental and physical stresses meant as famines – can disrupt the development of children in a sustainable manner. For example, men whose mothers were pregnant during the winter of 1946/47 in the Netherlands were more likely to suffer from schizophrenia. In England and Finland, children whose mothers were pregnant during the 1957 flu in the United States were more likely to have unipolar and bipolar disorders. It is not known how maternal stress promotes the development of neuropsychiatric disorders in children.

A research team led by Tracy Bale of the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore suggests that the vaginal microbiome might play a role. Bacteria present in the genital canal are the basis for the development of intestinal flora in newborns. Intestinal bacteria in turn affect the immune system, which could affect brain development. This sounds extravagant, but Bale's experiments on mice support this hypothesis

The researcher found that the litter of pregnant mice was exposed to an increased level of stress (say, because the researchers were detecting the condition). smell of foxes). pulverized in the cage), was underweight and had a reduced size. This effect could also be triggered in young animals born after a pregnancy without cesarean stress and then exposed to the vaginal microbiome of a stressed mother. In contrast, transmission of the microbiome of unstressed mothers was not able to mitigate the effects of an antistress pregnancy.

In a previous study, Bale had discovered that the stress of offspring of the father on offspring could also affect brain development. In contrast to dams, lifelong stress triggered, as Bale suggests, epigenetic changes in sperm DNA, which then influenced the neuropsychological development of the next generation (19459011) ] 2013; 33: 9003-9012). © rme / aerzteblatt.de