Prenatal maternal vaginal inflammation increases anxiety and alters HPA axis signalling in adult male mice.

BACKGROUND: Maternal infection during pregnancy is known to adversely affect foetal development, but previous studies have rarely investigated the impact of gynaecological diseases during pregnancy on offspring during adulthood. Vaginitis is one of the most prevalent gynaecological diseases during pregnancy. METHODS: The effect of maternal vaginal inflammation on offspring was simulated by inducing maternal vaginal infection. We performed a transvaginal injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in pregnant mice to induce vaginitis and investigated their offspring by means of behavioural tests and molecular and cellular measurements. RESULTS: Behavioural tests revealed that the offspring of mothers transvaginally injected with LPS exhibited sex-dependent differences. Male offspring showed increased anxiety-related behaviours, including reduced time exploring the open arm in the elevated plus maze test and light chamber in the light-dark box test. Serum levels of corticosterone were increased in LPS male offspring, indicating activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) protein expression and c-Fos positive cells were increased in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN) in LPS male offspring, which presented with an increased number of microglia. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that prenatal vaginal infection increases anxiety-like behaviour in male offspring, possibly via activation of the HPA axis.

Treponemal antibody in CSF and cellular immunity in peripheral blood of syphilitic patients with persisting positive rapid plasma regain.

The ratio of patients with RPR constant positive more than 2 years despite receiving standard syphilis treatment has been reported to be 11.54%~31.3%. The current interpretations on this phenomenon are cellular immune function restrained and the existence of neurosyphilis or asymptomatic neurosyphilis. We conducted this study to detect the treponemal antibody in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and lymphocyte subsets in peripheral blood of syphilis patients with persisting RPR positive more than 2 years without neurologic signs, and then explore their relationship. In this study, Treponemal antibody in CSF of 46 syphilitic with HIV negative were measured by syphilis serum test and compared with that of 5 neurosyphilis. Lymphocyte subsets were measured by flow cytometry (FCM) and compared with that of 30 healthy controls. We observed that treponemal antibody in CSF was detected not only in 12 cases (25.21%) of 46 treated patients, but also in 5 neurosyphilis. The ratio of lymphocyte subsets revealed that CD3+, CD4+ T cells and natural killer (NK) cells showed no significant differences between the patient and healthy controls (P>0.05), while CD8+ T cells in patients were significant higher than that in healthy controls (P<0.001). Lymphocyte subsets showed no significant differences between the patients with treponemal antibody positive and negative in CSF (P>0.05). In conclusion, the treponemal antibody in CSF of treated patients suggests that part of them were asymptomatic neurosyphilis and with cellular immunodifeciency. And there is no significant relationship between asymptomatic neurosyphilis and cellular immunodeficiency in peripheral blood.