Structure of Vaginal Microbiome Community After Perineal Disinfection and Its Effects on Neonatal Oral Microbiome

Abstract Background: Vaginal microbiota is not only an important source of bacterial colonization for neonates, but also plays a key role in maternal and neonatal health. In China, povidone iodine is used to disinfect vaginal during delivery. To date there has been no comprehensive study to investigate the vaginal microbiome composition after disinfection.Results: In this study, 27 women were recruited from Bao an Maternal and Child Health Hospital (Shenzhen, China). Vaginal samples before and after delivery were collected. Neonatal oral samples were also collected right after birth. Bacterial compositions of these study subjects were investigated using 16S rRNA sequencing of V3-V4 hyper-regions based on Hiseq 2500 platform. The results showed that vaginal microbiome during pregnancy were dominated by Lactobacillus spp. The identified microbiomes were separated into three community state types (CSTs), and a new CST (dominated by L. helveticus) was observed in this study. After disinfection, the relative abundance of Lactobacillus decreased and alpha diversity increased significantly. Moreover, most CST III and CST VI during pregnancy, both them dominated by Lactobacillus, shifted to CST IV in vaginal samples after disinfection. Additionally, the similar change pattern was observed in neonatal oral microbiome, and they overlapped with vaginal samples after disinfection in NMDS analysis.Conclusions: Perineal disinfection resulted in the decrease of genus Lactobacillus and increase of alpha diversity both in maternal vaginal microbiome and neonatal oral microbiome. In further, it is vital to understand the influence on maternal and neonatal health of vaginal microbiome community structure change after disinfection.