The Entero-Mammary Pathway and Perinatal Transmission of Gut Microbiota and SARS-CoV-2

Abstract

COVID-19 is a severe respiratory disease threatening pregnant women, which increases the possibility of adverse pregnancy outcomes. Several recent studies have demonstrated the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to infect the mother enterocytes, disturbing the gut microbiota diversity. The aim of this study was to characterize the entero-mammary microbiota of women in the presence of the virus during delivery. Fifty mother–neonate pairs were included in a transversal descriptive work. The presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in nasopharyngeal, mother rectal swabs (MRS) and neonate rectal swabs (NRS) collected from the pairs, and human colostrum (HC) samples collected from mothers. The microbiota diversity was characterized by high-throughput DNA sequencing of V3-16S rRNA gene libraries prepared from HC, MRS, and NRS. Data were analyzed with QIIME2 and R. Our results indicate that several bacterial taxa are highly abundant in MRS positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA. These bacteria mostly belong to the Firmicutes phylum; for instance, the families Bifidobacteriaceae, Oscillospiraceae, and Microbacteriaceae have been previously associated with anti-inflammatory effects, which could explain the capability of women to overcome the infection. All samples, both positive and negative for SARS-CoV-2, featured a high abundance of the Firmicutes phylum. Further data analysis showed that nearly 20% of the bacterial diversity found in HC was also identified in MRS. Spearman correlation analysis highlighted that some genera of the Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria phyla were negatively correlated with MRS and NRS (p < 0.005). This study provides new insights into the gut microbiota of pregnant women and their potential association with a better outcome during SARS-CoV-2 infection.