ResearchImagingIdentification of intracellular bacteria in the basal plate of the human placenta in term and preterm gestations
Section snippets
Study design
This is a cross-sectional study of women from a single tertiary care hospital. The study was approved by the institutional review board of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO. Women were enrolled during their antenatal course and followed up until delivery. Clinical data and placental specimens were collected through an institutional core resource, the Women's and Infant's Health Specimen Consortium. Gestational age was assigned by the best data available from the last
Results
Of 195 pregnancies evaluated in this study, 27% had evidence of intracellular bacteria in the basal plate of the placenta. Demographic characteristics of the patients who participated are demonstrated in Table 1. The multiple histologic stains used in this study assured us that we could determine both morphology and location of bacteria within cells in the basal plate if they were present, as posed in our hypothesis. We identified individual bacteria and biofilm-like clusters of bacteria in the
Principal findings of the study
This study demonstrates the first morphological documentation of intracellular organisms in the decidual basal plate of human placentas. Microbial biofilms, defined as microbial communities encapsulated within polysaccharide matrices,19 have been implicated in >80% of human infections such as periodontitis, urethritis, endocarditis, cystitis, and device-associated infections. Romero et al3 and DiGiulio et al20 demonstrated that there were biofilms in amniotic fluid. Here, we show that 27% of
Acknowledgments
We thank Fredrick Kraus, MD, and Phyllis Huettner, MD, for their expertise and assistance with histopathology interpretation.
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Cited by (0)
M.J.S. is supported by Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development T32 grant number 5 T32 HD055172-02 and Washington University Clinical and Translational Science Award grant number UL1 RR024992. I.U.M. is supported by a Preterm Birth Research Grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
The authors report no conflict of interest.
The Women's and Infant's Health Specimen Consortium was funded by grants from the Washington University Clinical and Translational Science (National Institutes of Health UL1 RR024992) and the Children's Discovery Institute of St. Louis Children's Hospital.
Cite this article as: Stout MJ, Conlon B, Landeau M, et al. Identification of intracellular bacteria in the basal plate of the human placenta in term and preterm gestations. Am J Obstet Gynecol 2013;208:226.e1-7.