A new study challenges the idea that the placenta has a microbiome
Scientists traced what microbes they did detect in tissue samples to lab tools and birth canals
Contrary to earlier reports, the human placenta is largely free of microbes, a study finds. The new result follows years of debate over whether the organ that nourishes and protects a growing fetus also holds bacteria.
Dueling evidence has been accumulating both for and against the presence of microbes in placentas. Amid the back-and-forth, molecular biologist Stephen Charnock-Jones of the University of Cambridge and colleagues were busy collecting thousands of placenta samples as part of a different study on maternal and fetal health. But the team became interested in the question of a possible collection of bacteria and other microbes, called a microbiome, in the placenta. “We thought, ‘This is an objective thing we can test,’” Charnock-Jones says.