Abstract
Type I diabetes (T1D) is a rapidly increasing autoimmune disease especially in the Western countries and poses a serious global health problem. Incidence of T1D cannot be fully explained by genetic background, and environmental factors have been assumed to play a role. Environmental conditions and composition of human microbiome have been found to correlate with the incidence of T1D. We asked whether mothers’ prevalent vaginal microbiome could correlate with the incidence of T1D in child. To test this hypothesis, we collected samples of vaginal microbiomes from eight mothers that had at least one child with T1D (child age maximum of 11 years at the time of sampling), born with a vaginal delivery. Eight control mothers had child/children with vaginal delivery and no diabetic child/children. The microbiomes were studied by using 16S rRNA Ion Torrent high throughput sequencing. We found that composition of total and Lactobacillus microbiome was altered, and saw an indication that diversity of vaginal microbiomes of the mothers with a diabetic child could be higher. Based on these pilot observations, we strongly encourage a larger population study to verify whether mother vaginal microbiome diversity and composition are linked to the prevalence of T1D in children.
Highlights
Type I diabetes (T1D) is one of the most common pediatric chronic diseases[1]
As the vaginal microbiome of the mother (i) may correlate with the microbiome of vaginally delivered neonates[22], (ii) the mode of delivery is correlated with the child microbiome[26,27] and (iii) because the child gut microbiome has been found to be altered in the progression of T1D4, we asked whether there would be systematic differences in the prevalent vaginal microbial communities between mothers with and without a T1D child/children
The reads were clustered into 185 operational taxonomic units (OTUs), representing seven identified phyla and 73 identified genera
Summary
Type I diabetes (T1D) is one of the most common pediatric chronic diseases[1]. The incidence of T1D has been increasing drastically especially in the population of the Western countries during the past decades[2,3,4] and this increase has been most dramatic among the children of 0–4 years of age[2,4]. The vaginal microbiome is considered to be relatively stable and resilient during the reproductive age until the menarche[36,37], but temporal variation related to menstrual cycle, sexual activity and original bacterial community composition has been described[37,38,39]. We studied vaginal microbiomes from a pilot group of mothers in Northern Finland, Oulu area, by using 16S rRNA Ion Torrent sequencing.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
