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Abstract
Perinatal factors can shape fecal microbiome patterns among pregnant women and their infants. However, there is scarce information about the effect of maternal demographics and perinatal exposures on antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) and mobile genetic element (MGE) patterns in pregnant women and infants. We examined fecal samples from pregnant women during their third trimester of pregnancy (n = 51) and 6-month-old infants (n = 40). Of the 91 participants, 72 represented 36 maternal-infant dyads, 15 were additional pregnant women, and 4 were additional infants. We assessed the effects of demographics, pre-pregnancy BMI, smoking and parity in the pregnancy resistome and the effects of demographics, delivery mode, feeding habits and prenatal antibiotic treatment on the infancy resistome. ARG and MGE richness and abundance were assessed using a SmartChip qPCR-array. Alpha diversity (Shannon and Inverse Simpson index) and beta diversity (Sorensen and Bray-Curtis index) were calculated. The Wilcoxon and the Kruskal non-parametric test were used for comparisons. There is a high variability in shared resistome patterns between pregnant women and their infants. An average of 29% of ARG and 24% of MGE were shared within dyads. Infants had significantly greater abundance and higher diversity of ARG and MGE compared to pregnant women. Pregnancy and infancy samples differed in ARG and MGE gene composition and structure. Composition of the fecal resistome was significantly associated with race in pregnant women, with non-white women having different patterns than white women, and, in infants, with extent of solid food consumption. Our data showed that the pregnancy and infancy resistome had different structure and composition patterns, with maternal race and infant solid food consumption as possible contributors to ARG. By characterizing resistome patterns, our results can inform the mechanism of antibiotic resistome development in pregnant women and their infants.
Highlights
The emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance is a major global public health concern since it presents an obstacle to the treatment and control of infections [1][2]
Our study describes an exploratory analysis characterizing the resistome of pregnant women and 6-month-old infants
We assessed the effects of age, pre-pregnancy BMI, smoking and parity in the pregnancy resistome and the effects of sex, delivery mode, feeding habits and prenatal antibiotic treatment on the infancy resistome
Summary
The emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance is a major global public health concern since it presents an obstacle to the treatment and control of infections [1][2]. The use of antibiotics among pregnant women is frequent and has been rising in the past decades, largely to prevent prenatal or postnatal complications such as neonatal Group B Streptococcus (GBS) infections, or to reduce the severity of infection after cesarean birth [3][4] [5][6]. The rising use of antibiotics has contributed to the epidemic of AMR in the United States [7], and may cause escalating AMR in pregnant women and their infants. The presence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) in the early gut microbiome of neonates suggests vertical transmission of these genes from mother to child [8][9][10]. ARG have been detected in meconium samples–intestinal contents formed prenatally–in utero ARG transmission remains an active research interest [16] [17] [18]
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