Submicroscopic infection of placenta by Plasmodium produces Th1/Th2 cytokine imbalance, inflammation and hypoxia in women from north-west Colombia

Malaria Journal

Research

Olga M Agudelo¹  Amanda Maestre¹  Jaime Carmona-Fonseca¹  Eliana Arango¹  Beatriz H Aristizabal²  Stephanie K Yanow³ 

[1] Grupo “Salud y Comunidad-César Uribe Piedrahita”, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia;Hospital Pablo Tobón Uribe, Laboratorio de Biología Molecular, Medellín, Colombia;School of Public Health, University of Alberta; Provincial Laboratory for Public Health, Edmonton, Canada;

关键词: Submicroscopic;    Placental malaria;    Plasmodium;    Cytokine;    Inflammation;    Hypoxia;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2875-13-122

 received in 2013-10-10, accepted in 2014-03-22,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundA large-scale study was set up in order to study the epidemiology, clinical aspects, and immunopathology of gestational and placental malaria in north-west Colombia. In this region, recent reports using a qPCR technique, confirmed frequencies of infection, by Plasmodium falciparum or Plasmodium vivax, up to 45%. Given the high rates of infection observed both in mother and placenta, a first exploratory study was proposed in order to characterize the effect on the inflammation status, tissue damage and hypoxia in Plasmodium spp. infected placentas.MethodsA descriptive, prospective, cross-sectional design was applied to pregnant women with (PM+) and without (PM-) placental malaria. Messenger RNA expression of Fas, FasL; COX-1, COX-2, HIF, VEGF, and the cytokines IL-2, IL-4, IL-10, IFN-γ and TNF, were measured in peripheral and placental blood using a quantitative PCR. The percentage of apoptotic cells was determined with a TUNEL assay.ResultsIn total 50 placentas were studied: 25 were positive for submicroscopic infection and 25 were negative for Plasmodium infection. Expression of IL-4 and IL-10 was observed high in placental tissue of PM+, while IL-2 was high in peripheral blood of the same group. Expression of TNF and IFNγ in peripheral blood of the PM + group was high. Similarly, the apoptotic index and Fas expression were significantly high in PM+. However, FasL expression was observed low in PM + compared to PM-. Inflammation markers (HIF, VEGF) and hypoxia markers (COX-1, COX-2) were high in the PM + group.ConclusionDuring placental malaria expression of some pro-inflammatory cytokines is up-regulated and markers of hypoxia and tissue damage are increased in cases of submicroscopic infection.

【 授权许可】

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© Agudelo et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.