Influence of pre-pregnancy body mass index (p-BMI) and gestational weight gain (GWG) on DNA methylation and protein expression of obesogenic genes in umbilical vein.

Understanding the regulatory mechanisms that affect obesogenic genes expression in newborns is essential for early prevention efforts, but they remain unclear. Our study aimed to explore whether the maternal p-BMI and GWG were associated with regulatory single-locus DNA methylation in selected obesogenic genes. For this purpose, DNA methylation was assayed by Methylation-Sensitive High Resolution Melting (MS-HRM) technique and Sanger allele-bisulfite sequencing in fifty samples of umbilical vein to evaluate glucosamine-6-phosphate deaminase 2 (GNPDA2), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1 alpha (PGC1α), and leptin receptor (LEPR) genes.

Repeated Measures of Cervicovaginal Cytokines during Healthy Pregnancy: Understanding "Normal" Inflammation to Inform Future Screening.

Objective: This study aimed to describe characteristics of cervicovaginal cytokines obtained during pregnancy from women who subsequently delivered at term.

Study Design: We used repeated measures of 20 cervicovaginal cytokines, collected on average on a monthly basis, from the second to the ninth month of gestation among 181 term pregnancies in the Mexico City Pregnancy Research on Inflammation, Nutrition, & City Environment: Systematic Analyses cohort (2009-2014). Cytokines were quantified using multiplex assay.

DNA Methylation Variability in a Single Locus of the RXRα Promoter from Umbilical Vein Blood at Term Pregnancy.

DNA methylation status of RXRα gene promoter has been correlated with maternal diet during early pregnancy, and associated with offspring's adiposity and bone mineral content. In adult life, increased methylation of RXRα promoter region is associated with myocardium pathologies. Early growth response proteins (EGR) are zinc finger transcription factors associated with several cellular pathways such as inflammation, apoptosis, and cardiopathies.

Matrix Metalloproteinase-3 (MMP-3) Is an Endogenous Activator of the MMP-9 Secreted by Placental Leukocytes: Implication in Human Labor.

Background: The activity of matrix degrading enzymes plays a leading role in the rupture of the fetal membranes under normal and pathological human labor, and matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) it is considered a biomarker of this event. To gain further insight into local MMP-9 origin and activation, in this study we analyzed the contribution of human placental leukocytes to MMP-9 secretion and explored the local mechanisms of the pro-enzyme activation.

Methods: Placental blood leukocytes were obtained from women at term gestation without labor and maintained in culture up to 72 h.

Air pollution, inflammation and preterm birth: a potential mechanistic link.

Preterm birth is a public health issue of global significance, which may result in mortality during the perinatal period or may lead to major health and financial consequences due to lifelong impacts. Even though several risk factors for preterm birth have been identified, prevention efforts have failed to halt the increasing rates of preterm birth. Epidemiological studies have identified air pollution as an emerging potential risk factor for preterm birth.

Choriodecidual cells from term human pregnancies show distinctive functional properties related to the induction of labor.

Problem: Human parturition is associated with an intrauterine pro-inflammatory environment in the choriodecidua. Evidence that some mediators of this signaling cascade also elicit responses leading to labor prompted us to characterize the cellular sources of these mediators in the human choriodecidua.

Method Of Study: Leukocyte-enriched preparations from human choriodecidua (ChL) and intervillous placental blood leukocytes (PL) were maintained in culture.

[Adverse perinatal outcomes in Mexican women with twin pregnancy achieved by assisted reproduction techniques vs. spontaneous twin pregnancies].

Background: Twin pregnancies (TP) have shown a greater risk of adverse perinatal outcomes than singletons have. However, there is still no consensus about whether the TP achieved by assisted reproduction techniques (ART) have worse perinatal outcomes compared with TP achieved spontaneously.

Objective: Compare the incidence of adverse perinatal outcomes (preterm birth, premature rupture of membranes, gestational diabetes, pregnancy-induced hypertension, anemia, weight and destination of the newborn) in Mexican women with TP achieved spontaneously vs those with TP achieved by ART.

[Expression of cell adhesion molecules in the maternal fetal period of human gestation].

Background: The human labor is an inflammatory process invading leukocytes modulated by gestational tissues. The local increase of cell adhesion molecules (CAMs) promotes the permanence of these leukocytes in the coriodecidua. Gestational tissues express ICAM-1, while circulating leukocytes expressing its ligand Mac-1.

Association between adiposity and inflammatory markers in maternal and fetal blood in a group of Mexican pregnant women.

In the present pilot study, we evaluated the effect of maternal adiposity on the plasma concentration of adipocytokines in pregnant women and their newborns. Twenty patients with term gestations without labour were initially selected by pregestational BMI and then classified into two study groups (n 10 each), according to their median value of adiposity (total body fat). Concentrations of TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, leptin and adiponectin in plasma of maternal peripheral blood and fetal cord blood were measured and correlated to maternal adiposity.

Placental blood leukocytes are functional and phenotypically different than peripheral leukocytes during human labor.

Rupture of the fetal membranes during human labor is associated with an inflammatory process localized to the maternal-fetal interface. There is evidence that specific leukocytes subsets are attracted to the choriodecidua, and that after homing they condition a local inflammatory microenvironment, possibly being directly involved in rupture of the membranes. In this study our aim was to compare the phenotypes and function of leukocytes located in the placental intervillous blood with peripheral leukocytes obtained before or after labor, including expression of modulators of inflammation in these cells.

[Spontaneous uterine rupture in a patient with polyhydramnios as only risk factor. Case report, literature review and institutional experience].

The uterine rupture is a catastrophic obstetric complication. The main risk factor is an antecedent of uterine surgery, usually caesarean. It is reported the case of a 39-years-old patient with 37 week-pregnancy and polyhydramnios, without surgical antecedents, whose was not in labor and developed complete rupture of the lateral face of the uterus, which was spontaneous, without previous uterine scar and with a unusual outcome.

[Evidence that periplacentary leukocytes subpopulations of term pregnancy have functional properties associated with labor induction].

Background: The rise of cholagenolitic activity in fetal membranes, associated to premature rupture, have been related to abnormal activity of the extracellular matrix metalloproteinases discharged to the extracellular space as inactive enzymes that have to be activated to selectively degrade its components.

Objective: To analyze the functional properties of leukocytes subpopulations coming from the placental circulation.

Material And Methods: Biomedical experimental study in which placental and outlying blood leukocytes were cultivated during 96 hours, from women with pregnancy to term without labor.

[Three-dimensional analysis of human chorioamniotic membranes structure in term pregnancy].

Background: Physical and structural chorioamniotic membranes integrity is due to a precise process of synthesis and degradation of collagen; surrounding collagenolitic activity raises during labor, what leads to a structural loss and mechanical resistance weakening, the main cause of its rupture under physiological and pathological conditions. Understanding of its three-dimensional structure is essential to characterize normal and pathological labor.

Objective: To analyze three-dimensional structure of human chorioamniotic membranes at gestational term.

[Extracellular matrix metalloproteases profile identification in chorioamniotic membranes of term and preterm pregnancies through soluble microarrays].

Background: Physiological and pathological membrane rupture is a complex phenomenon with different biochemical processes; it is known that collagenolitic activity rises and collagen content diminishes within term tissue membranes in comparison to preterm membranes. Identification of these processes within rupture mechanism allows to suggest that fetal membranes and decidua can respond to biochemical and mechanical stimulus alike, and to produce mediators that degrade matrix of intracellular membranes.

Objective: To identify simultaneously, whit a soluble microarray, different matrix metalloproteinases in extracts from amniochorion of pregnancies at term and preterm.

[Interleukin-6 levels changes in cervicovaginal exudates in labor evolution].

Objective: To evaluate the secretion of interleukin 6 (IL-6) in cervicovaginal fluid in a pseudocohort that emulates the evolution of the labor.

Material And Method: Samples of cervicovaginal fluid of patients with 20 to 40 weeks of gestation were taken, patients were classified in 5 strata of the development of the labor. Each stratum reflects the progressive activation of the uterine activity and the cervical changes.

[Identification of extracellular matrix metalloprotease 3 in the fetal membrane of the rat and its possible implication in the rupture of chorioamniotic membranes].

Objective: Human corioamniotic membranes, or their equivalent in the rat, function as selective barrier during gestation and their rupture is part of the mechanisms implied in the labor. Molecular mechanisms carried out in this process are unknown.

Type Of Study: Experimental animal model.

[Assessment of a microarray of solid-phase antibodies to the study of chemokines secreted by the chorioamniotic membrane].

Objective: At the end of pregnancy, a complex signaling network of cytokines, chemokines and proteic effector molecules is started. Due to such complexity, this network is very difficult to analyze. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an antibody-based proteomic analysis method to distinguish the simultaneous presence of different molecules in biological samples.

[Development and validation of an in vitro culture model for the study of the differentiation of human trophoblast].

Objectives: To develop a method to isolate cells of human citotrophoblast and to assess its invading and differentiation capacity.

Type Of Study: Experimental biomedical.

Materials And Method: Citotrophoblasts of healthy placentas of full-term pregnancies were isolated by digestion with dispase and purification in a density gradient.

Incubation of human chorioamniotic membranes with Candida albicans induces differential synthesis and secretion of interleukin-1beta, interleukin-6, prostaglandin E, and 92 kDa type IV collagenase.

Ascendant colonization of pathogenic microorganisms from the vagina to the uterus is strongly associated to preterm labour and premature rupture of membranes. This study evaluated the secretion of interleukin (IL)-1beta, tumour necrosis factor (TNF)alpha, IL-6, prostaglandin E(2) (PGE(2)), and metalloproteinases 9 and 2 by the human chorioamnion stimulated with Candida albicans. Chorioamniotic membranes were obtained after delivery by elective Cesarean section from women at 37-40 weeks of gestation without evidence of active labour.

Initial characterization of the microenvironment that regulates connective tissue degradation in amniochorion during normal human labor.

Extracellular matrix degradation in fetal membranes leading to its rupture is coupled to myometrial activity and cervical ripening during human normal labor. Mechanisms which modulate collagen degradation in amniochorion during labor have not been elucidated. Initial characterization of the effect of different blood compartments on connective tissue degradation in amniochorion during human labor was explored.

[Connective tissue degradation in human amniochorion after stimulation with choriodecidual lymphocytes infected with group B streptococci].

Objective: To identify whether soluble products from choriodecidual blood cells stimulated with group B streptococci (GBS) induce connective tissue degradation in human amniochorion.

Material And Methods: Blood samples from choriodecidual compartment were collected by direct aspiration from placental cotyledons draining blood and represent local circulating cells. Samples were divided into two aliquots: one was stimulated with GBS (1 x 10(6) CFU/mL) and the other was kept free of bacteria as negative control.

[Characterization of choriodecidual space as an effector molecule-rich environment that induces rupture of fetal membranes during labor].

Objective: To identify a specific microenvironment in direct contact with fetal membranes where effector molecules acumulate, aiming to degrade the components of its extracellular matrix during labor.

Type Of Study: Experimental, analytic, longitudinal and prospective.

Materials And Methods: Blood samples were collected from maternal, fetal and choriodecidual compartments, and mononuclear cells were isolated.

[Connective tissue degradation in human amniochorion after stimulation with choriodecidual lymphocytes infected with group B streptococci].

Objective: To identify whether soluble products from choriodecidual blood cells stimulated with group B streptococci (GBS) induce connective tissue degradation in human amniochorion.

Material And Methods: Blood samples from choriodecidual compartment were collected by direct aspiration from placental cotyledons draining blood and represent local circulating cells. Samples were divided into two aliquots: one was stimulated with GBS (1 X 10(6) CFU/mL) and the other was kept free of bacteria as negative control.

[Properties of the chorioamnios zone inducing premature membranes rupture].

Premature membrane rupture (PMR) is one of the most serious public health problems in the world, ocurring in 10% of all pregnancies. PMR has important adverse effects on maternofetal morbidity-mortality, as it has been estimated that it accounts on the whole for 70% and 40% of neonatal morbidity and mortality, respectively. PMR treatment is empirical, as its aetiology is unknown and its physiopathogenic description has just been initiated.