Scientists find unique combinations of oral microbes can help identify states of stress in pregnant individuals. What can our spit tell us about our mental health? Quite a bit actually. Researchers have recently found that the microbes found in the saliva of pregnant people could reveal whether they’re currently experiencing stress, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.
This is significant because while good mental health supports maternal well-being and healthy infant development, about 20% of pregnant women globally experience poor mental health.
While the gut microbiome is the most studied community of microbes on our bodies, there’s less known about the microbes that live in our mouths and how they impact our health.
“There’s a really burgeoning literature on the lower gut microbiome and mental health in humans, but there’s only a small handful of studies that have looked at associations between the oral microbiome and mental health,” said Joe Lonstein, a professor in behavioral neuroscience at Michigan State University who led this study. “None were in a pregnant population.”
By examining the connections between the oral microbiome and mental health in pregnant people, this study could not only help identify those in need of help, but could also provide a starting point for possible points of intervention to improve outcomes for pregnant people and their infants.
This study included 224 pregnant people in their second trimester. Participants collected saliva using at-home kits and in the same week, they completed surveys on the stressors they were experiencing and their mental health symptoms.
Lonstein and his colleagues identified the microbes present in the saliva based on their DNA sequences and looked for correlations between the microbes identified and mental health symptoms from the surveys.
They found that not all mental health symptoms correlated with the same set of microbes in the mouth. Lonstein explained, “if you had high [situational] anxiety, that was related to one set of microbes. If you have PTSD symptoms, that was related to a different set.”
In addition, this study found that the microbes from the saliva samples were different from what previous research has found about the connections between gut microbiome and […]
The surprising link between saliva and stress during pregnancy
