Host Factors Associated with Vaginal Microbiota Structure in Pregnancy

Although host factors have been shown to confound gut microbiome studies, there is relatively little known about host factors and the vaginal microbiome in pregnancy. Previous studies have reported compositional differences according to self-reported race, but they have not accounted for its social patterning and the ways in which it may be a proxy for unmeasured host factors or exposures. Studies of large and diverse populations are thus needed to disentangle the effects of social determinants of health and clinical factors on vaginal microbiota structure in pregnancy, given it has been shown to predict spontaneous preterm birth. Thus, our objective was to identify host factors associated with vaginal microbiome structure in pregnancy by leveraging existing 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequence data with well-characterized clinical, demographic, and biological data from the Michigan Archive for Research on Child Health (MARCH) cohort, part of the NIH Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program.