Journal article
Innate lymphoid cells are reduced in pregnant HIV positive women and are associated with preterm birth
- Abstract:
- Preterm birth is the leading cause of neonatal and child mortality worldwide. Globally, 1.4 million pregnant women are estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS, the majority of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa. Maternal HIV infection and antiretroviral treatment (ART) have been associated with increased rates of preterm birth, but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Acute HIV infection is associated with a rapid depletion of all three subsets of innate lymphoid cells (ILCs), ILC1s, ILC2s and ILC3s, which is not reversed by ART. ILCs have been found at the maternal–fetal interface and we therefore investigated the potential association between maternal HIV infection, peripheral ILC frequencies and preterm birth. In our study of pregnant South African women with accurately dated pregnancies, we show that maternal HIV infection is associated with reduced levels of all three ILC subsets. Preterm birth was also associated with lower levels of all three ILC subsets in early pregnancy. ILC frequencies were lowest in HIV positive women who experienced preterm birth. Moreover, ILC levels were reduced in pregnancies resulting in spontaneous onset of preterm labour and in extreme preterm birth (< 28 weeks gestation). Our findings suggest that reduced ILC frequencies may be a link between maternal HIV infection and preterm birth. In addition, ILC frequencies in early pregnancy may serve as predictive biomarkers for women who are at risk of delivering preterm.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, 5.3MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41598-020-69966-0
Authors
- Publisher:
- Nature Research
- Journal:
- Scientific reports More from this journal
- Volume:
- 10
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 13265
- Publication date:
- 2020-08-06
- Acceptance date:
- 2020-07-21
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2045-2322
- ISSN:
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2045-2322
- Pmid:
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32764636
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1124616
- Local pid:
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pubs:1124616
- Deposit date:
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2020-08-17
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Akoto et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2020
- Rights statement:
- ©2020 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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