Cytokines and parturition: investigating adiponectin, TNF-α, and IL-6 in mother–newborn pairs

Abstract

Objective

Cytokines are reported to be associated with various pregnancy complications and health outcomes of the offspring. However, reference values during pregnancy have not been established, effects of clinical and obstetric factors have not been examined, and interactions between different cytokines have not yet been reported.

Methods

In this cross-sectional study, we recruited 120 mother–newborn pairs. Maternal venous blood samples (6 mL) were taken on admission to the labor ward; newborn venous blood samples (6 mL) were drawn from the placental part of the umbilical cord (UC). Adiponectin, TNF-α, and IL-6 serum concentrations were measured by commercial immunoassays. Clinical and obstetric variables were analyzed for their association with maternal and UC cytokine concentrations.

Results

Forty-six adiponectin pairs, 55 TNF-α pairs, and 14 IL-6 pairs were available for analysis. Correlation between UC and maternal adiponectin-, IL-6-, and TNF-α levels was low. We found a significant correlation of UC adiponectin with maternal brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and maternal adiponectin, and between maternal leptin and maternal TNF-α.

Conclusions

Clinical and obstetric variables as well as interactions between cytokines may have an impact on serum concentrations of the respective cytokines in maternal and UC blood. Further studies are required to confirm our findings.

Key Words:

• Adiponectin
• cytokines

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the work of Iris Paffenholz (sample preparation) and all midwives employed at University Bonn Medical School (Germany) involved in sample collection. None of them received any compensation for their work or had funding resources that supported this work.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Anne Floeck: conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, investigation, writing- original draft

Nina Ferrari: investigation, resources, writing- review and editing

Christine Joisten: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, resources

Maria T Puth: validation, formal analysis, writing - review and editing

Brigitte Strizek: validation, investigation, resources, writing- review and editing

Ulrich Gembruch: investigation, resources, writing- review and editing

Waltraut M. Merz: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, resources, writing – original draft.

Disclosure statement

All authors declare there is no conflict of interest.