Kristi Adamo, a full professor in the School of Human Kinetics of the University of Ottawa, focuses her research on pregnant individuals with healthy pregnancies and delivery at term (37 weeks or over). Her research program is guided by the “developmental origins of health and disease” (DOHaD) paradigm, which focuses on the early years of life, to understand how prenatal exposure can have long-term effects on the baby.
Adamo says that staying active during pregnancy can have several benefits, such as reducing excessive gestational weight gain, symptoms of depression and anxiety, and risks of gestational diabetes, preeclampsia and gestational hypertension.
However, we lack information on why and how this is the case. Adamo’s laboratory is one of the first in the world to fill this gap by focusing on the role of the placenta and the way exercise might alter the behaviour of this organ, including in her recently funded research study, using the acronym “GLOW,” for Gestational Lifestyle — Omics and Well-being.
Revealing the placenta’s role
Kristi Adamo says that “the placenta is the organ of pregnancy — it connects the baby to the pregnant person. It is responsible for transporting nutrients, oxygen, and for removing waste products.” The researcher and her team argue that exercise affects how the placenta behaves and delivers these benefits to the baby. “We believe it is through the placenta that the benefits of exercise are accrued for the baby,” Adamo says.
Over the last seven years, Adamo’s research team undertook its “placenta study,” funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). It recruited over 100 pregnant individuals and brought them to the laboratory several times over their pregnancy to assess their physical activity level, using an accelerometer. It also collected blood samples and had the participants complete lifestyle questionnaires.
This information was then used to phenotype the individuals, that is to say, gather a much information as they could about them. Then, as Adamo explains, “the latter were split into two groups: those that were highly active during their pregnancy, meaning they met or exceeded Canadian guidelines for physical activity, and those who were very inactive. Samples of the placenta of these individuals were collected at labour and delivery, which enabled us to compare various factors between the two groups, like nutrient transporters, immune cells or lipid storage in the placenta.”
Exploring the microbiome-metabolome connection
Building on the success of the “placenta study,” Adamo’s team is now launching a new CIHR-funded study called GLOW. This study will be conducted over the next five years and will focus on the microbiome (a collection of organisms living in our gut) and the metabolome (molecules produced during metabolism) of the pregnant person. “There are reports indicating that the microbiome and the metabolome greatly affect the growth and health of the baby and even communicate with each other, but very little is known about the mechanisms,” says Kristi Adamo.
Adamo adds that “exercising is believed to change the microbiome and metabolome, which could eventually affect how the placenta works as well.” Thus, the researchers will look at the molecules in the blood across pregnancy and placenta tissues of pregnant individuals collected at birth to study differences in these molecules and how they interact. Fecal samples will also be collected from the birthing parent at several timepoints in pregnancy, as well as the baby, seven to 10 days after birth.
Moreover, researchers will be able to follow pregnant individuals and their babies after birth, to continue collecting information such as their weight and height. Researchers will also connect the data obtained during pregnancy with a registry of health records (listing hospital visits, infections, antibiotic use, complications after birth, etc.). This will help determine if factors such as exercise during pregnancy influence the long-term health of the parent and child.
This ambitious study holds the potential to transform prenatal care practices, ultimately leading to healthier outcomes for both parents and their children. Adamo is very excited about the new funding and looks forward to uncovering more about how exercise benefits pregnancy.