Identification of the correlations between interleukin-27 (IL-27) and immune-inflammatory imbalance in preterm birth

ABSTRACT

Preterm birth (PTB) is an immune-inflammatory disease that needs to be resolved. This study aimed to identify the role of interleukin-27 (IL-27), an immunomodulatory factor, in PTB and its associated mechanisms. Here, we analyzed the high-throughput of samples data from the maternal-fetal interface to the peripheral circulation obtained from public databases and reported that the elevated IL-27 was involved with the onset of PTB. Further bioinformatics analyses (e.g. GeneMANIA and GSEA) revealed that IL-27 overexpression in the peripheral circulation as well as maternal-fetal interface is related to the activation of the immune-inflammatory process represented by IFN-γ signaling, etc. In addition, IL-27 and immune infiltration correlation analysis demonstrated that IL-27 mediates this immune-inflammatory imbalance, plausibly mainly through monocyte-macrophage and neutrophils. This finding was further validated by analyzing additional datasets. Overall, this is the first study to elaborate on the role of IL-27-mediated immuno-inflammation in PTB from the perspective of bioinformatics, which may provide a novel strategy for the prevention and treatment of PTB.

Graphical abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Preterm birth
• interleukin-27
• inflammation
• immune
• mechanism

Acknowledgements

The authors thank E Gong of the Department of Obstetrics, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, for administrative support. Special thanks to Dr. Bunny for ongoing support and encouragement.

The authors also would like to appreciate the support from “111 program” of Ministry of Education P.R.C and State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs P.R.C.

Authors’ contributions

HQ and NY designed the experiments and supervised the study. YR performed the experiments, analyzed and interpreted the data. YR wrote the manuscript. YM and DH helped to perform the statistical analysis. ZL, JH, and YZ contributed to the acquisition of high-throughput data. HZ revised the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethics statement

All the datasets analyzed in this study were obtained from the GEO and SRA databases (publicly available and open-access), which were approved by the ethics committee of their submitting institutions. Therefore, the Medical Research Ethics Committee of The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University ruled that no formal ethics approval was required in this particular case.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China for Youth [No. 81801483], The Chongqing Municipal Health Commission [No. 2020MSXM029], The National Key Research and Development Program of Reproductive Health & Major Birth Defects Control and Prevention [No. 2016YFC1000407], The Chongqing Science and Technology Commission [cstc2017shms-zdyfX0034], The Chongqing Municipal Education Commission [No. CYB20141], and The Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province [No. 2020YFQ0006].