Abstract
Antibiotic exposure during pregnancy will adversely affect the growth of offspring; however, this remains controversial and the mechanism is poorly understood. To study this phenomenon, we added ceftriaxone sodium to the drinking water of pregnant rats and continuously monitored the body weight of their offspring. The results showed that compared with the control group, the offspring exposed to antibiotics during pregnancy had a higher body weight up to 3 weeks old but had a lower body weight at 6 weeks old. To determine the role of the gut microbiota and its metabolites in the growth of offspring, we collected feces for sequencing and further established that the experimental group has a different composition ratio of dominant bacteria at 6 week old, among which S24–7 correlated negatively with body weight and the metabolites that correlated with body weight-related unique flora were L-Valine, L-Leucine, Glutaric acid, N-Acetyl-L-glutamate, and 5-Methylcytosine. To further explore how they affect the growth of offspring, we submitted these data to Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes website for relevant pathway analysis. The results showed that compared with the control, the following metabolic pathways changed significantly: Valine, leucine, and isoleucine biosynthesis; Protein digestion and absorption; and Mineral absorption. Therefore, we believe that our findings support the conclusion that ceftriaxone sodium exposure in pregnancy has a long-lasting adverse effect on the growth of offspring because of an imbalance of gut microbiota, especially S24–7, via different metabolic pathways.
Highlights
In recent years many diseases during pregnancy have been treated using antibiotics [12]; the risk of antibiotic exposure during pregnancy is gradually increasing [5]
Microflora structure of the feces of pregnant rats To verify whether the structure of the microbiota in pregnant rat feces changed after antibiotic exposure, we collected the feces and performed DNA sequencing
To screen the differences in the members of the microbiota, multivariate statistical analysis was performed in accordance with the relative abundance of each of the bacteria in the sample to obtain the variable importance of projection (VIP) score
Summary
In recent years many diseases during pregnancy have been treated using antibiotics [12]; the risk of antibiotic exposure during pregnancy is gradually increasing [5]. A recent study [1] showed that prenatal exposure to antibiotics reduced the birth weight of babies by approximately 138 g; it has been found that antibiotic exposure during pregnancy was associated with the incidence of childhood obesity [24]. Population-based studies [8, 9] have shown that prenatal exposure to antibiotics is not associated with overweight offspring.
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