Abstract
During pregnancy, mothers undergo a range of physiological changes including shifting hormone levels, modified immune function, and reduced gut motility. These changes are necessary to meet the pregnant mother’s increased energy needs and inhibit rejection of the fetus. The gut microbiota (GM) – the community of microorganisms that live in the digestive tract – is theorized to play a role in the production and regulation of the immune system. As a result, the GM is theorized to mediate immune changes during pregnancy. Because the exact nature of this relationship is unknown, my project investigated how the GM and markers of immune function differ during pregnancy by focusing on the fecal samples and blood spots of pregnant and non-pregnant women from Cebu, Philippines. By conducting 16s rRNA bacterial gene sequencing, preliminary data indicates that pregnancy does not have a significant effect on the GM for this dataset, which is contradictory to previous research. Furthermore, immune marker assays did not show differences between pregnant and non-pregnant women. Since previous research on both immune function and the GM during pregnancy has focused on American and European populations, this project contributes to limited data on how the relationship between these factors may vary across populations. Ultimately, this research can improve our understanding of the factors driving pregnancy outcomes and can inform the development of microbial techniques to treat immune diseases.