Differences in vaginal microbiome in African American women versus women of European ancestry - PubMed (original) (raw)

Comparative Study

. 2014 Oct;160(Pt 10):2272-2282.

doi: 10.1099/mic.0.081034-0. Epub 2014 Jul 29.

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Comparative Study

Differences in vaginal microbiome in African American women versus women of European ancestry

Jennifer M Fettweis et al. Microbiology (Reading). 2014 Oct.

Abstract

Women of European ancestry are more likely to harbour a Lactobacillus-dominated microbiome, whereas African American women are more likely to exhibit a diverse microbial profile. African American women are also twice as likely to be diagnosed with bacterial vaginosis and are twice as likely to experience preterm birth. The objective of this study was to further characterize and contrast the vaginal microbial profiles in African American versus European ancestry women. Through the Vaginal Human Microbiome Project at Virginia Commonwealth University, 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis was used to compare the microbiomes of vaginal samples from 1268 African American women and 416 women of European ancestry. The results confirmed significant differences in the vaginal microbiomes of the two groups and identified several taxa relevant to these differences. Major community types were dominated by Gardnerella vaginalis and the uncultivated bacterial vaginosis-associated bacterium-1 (BVAB1) that were common among African Americans. Moreover, the prevalence of multiple bacterial taxa that are associated with microbial invasion of the amniotic cavity and preterm birth, including Mycoplasma, Gardnerella, Prevotella and Sneathia, differed between the two ethnic groups. We investigated the contributions of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, including pregnancy, body mass index, diet, smoking and alcohol use, number of sexual partners, and household income, to vaginal community composition. Ethnicity, pregnancy and alcohol use correlated significantly with the relative abundance of bacterial vaginosis-associated species. Trends between microbial profiles and smoking and number of sexual partners were observed; however, these associations were not statistically significant. These results support and extend previous findings that there are significant differences in the vaginal microbiome related to ethnicity and demonstrate that these differences are pronounced even in healthy women.

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Figures

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.

Proportion of lactobacilli, alpha diversity and ethnicity. Circles denote African American (AA) subjects and triangles denote European ancestry (EA) subjects. The model and plot were generated using a random sample of 416 AA subjects and all 416 EA subjects for whom data were available. Diversity is shown on the _x_-axis and the percentage of the vaginal microbiome belonging to the genus Lactobacillus is on the _y_-axis. For the subjects who the model indicated are representative of EA (blue triangles in the blue shaded regions), diversity appears to increase as the proportion of Lactobacillus decreases. For the subjects who the model indicated are representative of AA (red circles in the red shaded regions), as diversity increases, so does the proportion of Lactobacillus.

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.

Microbiome profiles of women of African American or European ancestry. Stacked bar plots showing microbiome profiles from (a) 960 African American women and (b) 330 European ancestry women. The profiles are grouped by the dominant species into different profile types and are ordered by decreasing proportion of the dominant bacterium. Black ticks below the _x_-axis denote subjects with BV. Colour codes for bacterial taxa appear in Figs S1 and S2.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 3.

Bacterial species that correlate significantly with ethnicity. Barplot of the LDA score for bacterial species that are more prevalent in (a) healthy African American women and healthy European ancestry women and (b) those diagnosed with BV. The healthy (a) cohort includes 662 women (419 African American, 243 European ancestry) and the BV cohort (b) includes 251 women (233 African American, 18 European ancestry).

Fig. 4.

Fig. 4.

Prevalance of preterm birth-associated species in samples from pregnant subjects. Stacked barplot of the percentage of reads from preterm birth-associated bacterial taxa in African Americans versus women of European ancestry. The plot is based on 246 pregnant African Americans and 76 pregnant women of European ancestry. Of these subjects, 33 African Americans and five European ancestry women were diagnosed with BV and 137 African Americans and 45 women of European ancestry were healthy.

Fig. 5.

Fig. 5.

Relationship between the percentage of BV-associated bacteria and pregnancy and ethnicity. The analysis includes healthy women and women with BV. Subjects were grouped based on self-reported pregnancy status. Within each group, the proportion of BV-associated bacteria was plotted for women of African ancestry (AA) and women of European ancestry (EA). The boxes indicate the interquartile range, and the horizontal line in each box indicates the median. The plot reflects data from 418 women.

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