Maternal gut microbiome during early pregnancy predicts preterm birth.

Preterm birth, the leading cause of infant mortality and morbidity, lacks robust biomarkers for early risk prediction. Here, we characterized the maternal gut microbiome in 5,313 Chinese pregnant women from two independent cohorts and identified eleven genera and one species associated with preterm birth during early pregnancy. We demonstrated that microbial risk scores (MRSs), generated from selected microbial genera or species, could effectively segregate pregnant women with shorter gestational duration and at higher preterm birth risk. The MRS showed interaction with host polygenic susceptibility to amplify preterm birth risk. Among bacteria comprising the MRS, Clostridium innocuum exhibited the most promising replicable microbial feature for preterm birth. The C. innocuum exhibited 17β-estradiol-degrading activity, and the estradiol-degrading gene k141_29441_57, validated through functional prediction and heterologous expression in E. coli, was enriched in women with preterm birth. These findings open new avenues for microbiome-targeted predictive and therapeutic strategies to mitigate adverse pregnancy outcomes.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Cell Host and Microbe

• Publication date

  2025-09-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.chom.2025.08.004PMID 40934886
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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