Corrie Miller
University of Hawaii at Manoa, HI·Medicine & Clinical Research
Babies born too early, before 37 weeks of pregnancy, can face lasting health problems. In Hawaiʻi, preterm birth is especially common among Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
preterm birth
vaginal microbiome
Lactobacillus crispatus
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Test whether women who deliver preterm have more Lactobacillus iners or anaerobic bacteria in mid-pregnancy vaginal swabs, using 16S sequencing to identify bacteria and to assign community state types (common bacterial patterns).
- Measure inflammatory cytokines (immune signaling proteins) with multiplex ELISA and metabolites with mass spectrometry in vaginal swabs, and compare them between women who did and did not deliver preterm.
- Determine whether stress, food insecurity, poor diet and perceived racism, unless offset by resiliency, are linked to vaginal microbial imbalance and preterm birth, using participant surveys.
- Build a preterm birth risk profile using machine learning that combines environmental and social exposures with the dominant vaginal bacterial species.
More about the research
One promising clue to who is at risk lies in the community of bacteria living in the vagina, called the vaginal microbiome. Certain bacterial patterns appear to trigger inflammation that may start labor early. Social conditions such as income, diet, access to care and racism may also shape these bacteria. This project asks how both factors relate to preterm birth risk in Hawaiʻi.
Why it matters
Preterm birth causes long-term illness in many infants, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander families in Hawaiʻi are affected at high rates. Linking vaginal bacteria, inflammation and social conditions to preterm birth could lead to a bedside test that flags high-risk pregnancies early. It could also point to inflammatory pathways that targeted treatments might block to help prevent early delivery.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Diana Tordoff
Stanford University, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Recruit a longitudinal cohort of peri-menopausal, early post-menopausal and late post-menopausal women and characterize how vaginal microbiota composition and taxonomic richness change after they start menopause treatments.
Victoria Handa
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Medicine & Clinical Research
Measure how vaginal estrogen therapy changes the vaginal and urinary microbiota, especially specific Lactobacillus species such as L. crispatus, in postmenopausal women with recurrent UTI, using 16S rRNA gene sequencing before and after treatment.
Johanna Holm
University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD·Microbiology & Immunology
Uncover how the vaginal microbiome helps BV clear on its own, using genome-wide association analysis of metagenome-assembled genomes (bacterial genomes rebuilt from mixed DNA) and a new statistical method.
The school
University of Hawaii at Manoa: 23 labs on PI Pages, $376M a year on research, 182 research doctorates a year.
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