Can an environmental exposures affect pregnant women? Chemicals in a mother’s vagina could also be related to spontaneous preterm birth, researchers have found.

For his or her study, published in Nature Microbiology, a team of researchers checked out the second-trimester vaginal metabolome of 232 pregnant women. The metabolome is basically the “complete set” of the small molecules in a cell or organism.

“The metabolome may be seen as a functional readout of the ecosystem as an entire,” the study’s co-lead, Tal Korem of Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CIUMC), explained within the university release. “Microbiome profiling can tell us who the microbes are; metabolomics gets us near understanding what the microbes are doing.”

Vaginal microbes and metabolites have been related to pregnancy complications, including preterm birth — the situation wherein a baby is born sooner than 37 weeks of pregnancy.

Preterm birth is alleged to be the “leading cause” of neonatal death, the researchers noted. And people who survive can also find yourself developing issues corresponding to respiration problems, developmental delay, hearing problems or cerebral palsy.

Spontaneous preterm birth (sPTB), however, is preterm birth that is not medically induced and accounts for about two-thirds of all PTBs. It is alleged to be “a number one explanation for maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality.”

“Previous investigations have suggested that vaginal microbes and metabolites could also be implicated in sPTB,” the researchers wrote.

Nonetheless, a “clear consensus” on the precise relationship between the 2 aspects has remained largely out of reach.

Out of the 232 women within the study, 80 ended up giving birth preterm.

The researchers found “multiple associations” between the mothers’ vaginal metabolites and eventual preterm birth. Multiple metabolites were actually higher in them than those who delivered to full term, in keeping with CUIMC. Notably, several metabolites “with strong associations with sPTB” were exogenous or from external sources.

“These include diethanolamine (DEA), ethyl-beta glucoside, tartrate and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid,” Korem said, as per CUIMC. “While we didn’t discover the source of those xenobiotics in our participants, all may very well be present in cosmetics and hygiene products.”

As an illustration, DEA has “no known natural source” and girls of reproductive age are said to be “highly exposed” to it. Ethyl glucoside, however, is in products that contain alcohol. Each are said to be “precursors or ingredients in hygienic and cosmetic products.”

“(T)he indisputable fact that all are documented in hygienic and cosmetic products raises concern that a few of these products may increase the chance of sPTB,” the researchers wrote. “Our results coincide with recent studies raising concerns regarding environmental exposures in pregnancy, and discover these chemicals within the reproductive tract.”

The researchers also developed an algorithm that might predict preterm birth “with good accuracy.” Nonetheless, it still must be improved and validated further before it might be utilized in the clinical setting, in keeping with CUIMC.

Overall, the researchers showed the potential of such metabolite testing to predict sPTB and in addition highlighted some potential external exposures that could be risk aspects for it. It might be value looking further into the possible source of the exposures, and whether or not they actually cause preterm births, Korem said.

“The excellent news is that if these chemicals are guilty, it might be possible to limit these potentially harmful exposures,” he added.