Prenatal PFAS exposure and outcomes related to maternal gut microbiome composition in later pregnancy.
Level 3 - non-randomized controlled study
Prospective observational cohort study
PubMed 40311903 · doi:10.1016/j.envres.2025.121709
What was done
Researchers evaluated associations between maternal prenatal PFAS exposure (measured in plasma or serum in early or late pregnancy) and gut microbiome composition in late pregnancy (2nd to 3rd trimester, analyzed via 16S rRNA sequencing). Participants were drawn from two distinct cohorts in the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program: the Atlanta African American Maternal Child Cohort (ATL AA) and the Michigan Archive for Research on Child Health Cohort (MARCH). Linear regression, Bayesian Kernel Machine Regression, and Elastic net mixture models were used to assess alpha diversity, beta diversity, and differential taxonomic abundance, adjusting for maternal diet, age, race, BMI, and smoking.
What was found
PFAS exposures were significantly associated with the relative abundance of several bacterial taxa after covariate adjustment, but the specific taxa affected differed between cohorts: - In the ATL AA cohort, 16 significant family-level associations were identified (e.g., PFOA associated with higher Clostridiaceae, natural log fold change = 0.94, FDR p < 0.05). - In the MARCH cohort, 13 significant family-level associations were identified (e.g., PFOS associated with lower Desulfovibrionaceae, natural log fold change = -1.53, FDR p < 0.05). - Mixture modeling detected modest individual PFAS contributions to beta diversity models in both cohorts, but found no overall interactive or combined mixture effects.
Why it matters
This study provides evidence that environmental PFAS exposure during pregnancy is linked to changes in the maternal gut microbiome. However, because individual taxonomic shifts did not replicate between distinct demographic and geographic cohorts, broad generalizations about specific PFAS-microbe interactions remain limited.
Limits
The abstract does not report participant sample sizes for either cohort. Findings were entirely cohort-specific with no overlapping family-level taxonomic associations between the two populations. 16S rRNA sequencing provides limited functional insight compared to metagenomic sequencing, and the observational design cannot eliminate residual confounding or establish causality.
Cited by
- supports PFAS chemicals are linked to hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, and fertility issues.