Abstract
Increasing evidence suggests that parturition is an inflammatory process. In this brief overview, inflammatory events occurring in association with parturition, and the mechanism by which they may contribute to labour and delivery will be discussed. Mention will be made of how this information may be of use in regulating the timing and the onset of parturition.
Highlights
Preterm birth is the single biggest cause of perinatal mortality and morbidity
Work from our own and other groups increasingly suggests that parturition is an inflammatory process, and we anticipate that further understanding of these events will contribute to interventions to prevent preterm birth
Further work from other groups established that pro-inflammatory cytokines may contribute to the myometrial remodelling which occurs with labour [9]. These data all need to be interpreted with caution, because the experiments were performed in myometrial cells rather than whole tissue or in vivo, but if they can be replicated in more physiological conditions it seems likely that the influx of leukocytes can contribute directly to the pathophysiology of parturition
Summary
Preterm birth is the single biggest cause of perinatal mortality and morbidity. Preterm birth rates are rising in all developed countries. Work from our own and other groups increasingly suggests that parturition is an inflammatory process, and we anticipate that further understanding of these events will contribute to interventions to prevent preterm birth. By performing Northern analysis on biopsies of myometrium taken from each of labouring and non labouring women, we established that this leukocytic influx was paralleled by up-regulation of pro-inflammatory cytokine mRNA expression, IL-1β, IL-6 and IL-8 [3].
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