TY - JOUR
T1 - Exposure to in utero lipopolysaccharide induces inflammation in the fetal ovine skin
AU - Kemp, Matthew W.
AU - Saito, Masatoshi
AU - Nitsos, Ilias
AU - Jobe, Alan H.
AU - Kallapur, Suhas G.
AU - Newnham, John P.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by grants from the Ramaciotti Foundations (Australia), the Women and Infants Research Foundation (Western Australia), and the Financial Markets Foundation for Children to MWK and by NIH grant HD 57869 to SGK. The authors wish to thank Sara Ritchie for invaluable assistance with animal husbandry.
Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article: Ramaciotti Foundations (Australia), the Women and Infants Research Foundation (Western Australia) and the Financial Markets Foundation for Children to MWK and by NIH grant HD 57869 to SK.
PY - 2011/1
Y1 - 2011/1
N2 - Inflammation is a defensive process by which the body responds to both localized and systemic tissue damage by the induction of innate and adaptive immunity. Literature from human and animal studies links inappropriate in utero inflammation to preterm parturition and fetal injury. The pathways by which such inflammation may cause labor, however, are not fully understood. Any proinflammatory agonist in the amniotic fluid will contact the fetal skin, in its entirety, but a potential role of the fetal skin in the pathways to labor have not previously been explored. We hypothesized that the fetal skin would respond robustly to the presence of intra-amniotic lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in our ovine model of in utero inflammation. In vitro and in utero exposure of fetal ovine keratinocytes or fetal skin to Escherichia coli LPS reliably induced significant increases in interleukin 1β (IL-1β), IL-6, tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α), and IL-8 expression. We demonstrate that, in utero, this expression requires direct exposure with LPS suggesting that the inflammation is triggered directly in the skin itself, rather than as a secondary response to a systemic stimuli and that inflammation involves Toll-like receptor (TLR) regulation and neutrophil chemotaxis in concordance with an acute inflammatory reaction. We show that this response involves multiple inflammatory mediators, TLR regulation, and localized inflammatory cell influx characteristic of an acute inflammatory reaction. These novel data strongly suggests that the fetal skin acts as an important mediator of the fetal inflammatory response and as such may contribute to preterm birth.
AB - Inflammation is a defensive process by which the body responds to both localized and systemic tissue damage by the induction of innate and adaptive immunity. Literature from human and animal studies links inappropriate in utero inflammation to preterm parturition and fetal injury. The pathways by which such inflammation may cause labor, however, are not fully understood. Any proinflammatory agonist in the amniotic fluid will contact the fetal skin, in its entirety, but a potential role of the fetal skin in the pathways to labor have not previously been explored. We hypothesized that the fetal skin would respond robustly to the presence of intra-amniotic lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in our ovine model of in utero inflammation. In vitro and in utero exposure of fetal ovine keratinocytes or fetal skin to Escherichia coli LPS reliably induced significant increases in interleukin 1β (IL-1β), IL-6, tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α), and IL-8 expression. We demonstrate that, in utero, this expression requires direct exposure with LPS suggesting that the inflammation is triggered directly in the skin itself, rather than as a secondary response to a systemic stimuli and that inflammation involves Toll-like receptor (TLR) regulation and neutrophil chemotaxis in concordance with an acute inflammatory reaction. We show that this response involves multiple inflammatory mediators, TLR regulation, and localized inflammatory cell influx characteristic of an acute inflammatory reaction. These novel data strongly suggests that the fetal skin acts as an important mediator of the fetal inflammatory response and as such may contribute to preterm birth.
KW - Inflammation
KW - Preterm birth
KW - Skin
KW - Uterine infection
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U2 - 10.1177/1933719110380470
DO - 10.1177/1933719110380470
M3 - Article
C2 - 20923949
AN - SCOPUS:79952520633
VL - 18
SP - 88
EP - 98
JO - Reproductive Sciences
JF - Reproductive Sciences
SN - 1933-7191
IS - 1
ER -