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Abstract
Background: Although maternal infection and inflammation during pregnancy can adversely affect offspring birth weight (BW), whether low grade inflammation in the non-pregnant state predicts BW is unknown.
Aim: To evaluate relationships between offspring BW and pro- and anti-inflammatory factors measured in parous but non-pregnant women.
Subjects and methods: Data come from 234 parous Filipino females (21.5 ± 0.3 years) in the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey, a population-based birth cohort in Metropolitan Cebu, Philippines. Pro-inflammatory [Interleukin-6 (IL-6), Interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β), tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNFα), C-reactive protein (CRP)] and anti-inflammatory [Interleukin-10 (IL-10)] factors were measured in fasting plasma when the women were not pregnant, and related to recalled offspring BW.
Results: BW in female offspring was lower only among women with high IL-1β. Although pro-inflammatory cytokines did not predict BW in male offspring, women with higher anti-inflammatory IL-10 gave birth to larger males. Women with a combination of low inflammatory (IL-6) and high anti-inflammatory (IL-10) factors (interaction p < 0.104) gave birth to the largest males.
Conclusion: Immune factors measured outside of pregnancy predict offspring BW in these young women. Stable variation in inflammatory phenotype could impact the gestational environment of offspring, thus pointing to potential inter-generational effects of chronic low-grade inflammation.
Acknowledgements
Funding for this study was provided by the National Institutes of Health (RO1 HL085144; 5 RO1 TW05596); biomarker data collection was supported by pilot funds from the Interdisciplinary Obesity Center (RR20649) and the Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility (ES10126; project 7-2004-E); National Science Foundation (BCS-0746320). PST was supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship while contributing to this analysis. We thank the many scholars and researchers at the Office of Population Studies, University of San Carlos, Cebu, Philippines, for their role in study design and data collection and the Filipino participants who generously provided their time for this study.
Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.