Abstract

Type I diabetes (T1D) is a rapidly increasing autoimmune disease especially in the Western countries and poses a serious global health problem. Incidence of T1D cannot be fully explained by genetic background, and environmental factors have been assumed to play a role. Environmental conditions and composition of human microbiome have been found to correlate with the incidence of T1D. We asked whether mothers’ prevalent vaginal microbiome could correlate with the incidence of T1D in child. To test this hypothesis, we collected samples of vaginal microbiomes from eight mothers that had at least one child with T1D (child age maximum of 11 years at the time of sampling), born with a vaginal delivery. Eight control mothers had child/children with vaginal delivery and no diabetic child/children. The microbiomes were studied by using 16S rRNA Ion Torrent high throughput sequencing. We found that composition of total and Lactobacillus microbiome was altered, and saw an indication that diversity of vaginal microbiomes of the mothers with a diabetic child could be higher. Based on these pilot observations, we strongly encourage a larger population study to verify whether mother vaginal microbiome diversity and composition are linked to the prevalence of T1D in children.