Serum levels of tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin-15 and interleukin-10 in patients with pre-eclampsia in comparison with normotensive pregnant women

Pre-eclampsia (PE) is a pregnancy associated disorder characterized by hyper-tension and proteinuria. The first 2 stages of PE cause dysfunction in uteroplacental perfusion and oxidative stress while the third stage of PE is due to the release of inflammatory and angiogenic factors, which could lead to maternal endothelial damage and systemic inflammatory response. In this study, we compared the serum levels of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-15 (IL-15), and interleukin-10 (IL-10) in PE and normotensive women. Serum samples of 84 pregnant women (44 PE and 40 normotensive) were evaluated for TNF-α, IL-15 and IL-10 by sandwich ELISA assay. The women with PE showed significantly higher serum levels of TNF-α and IL-15 (P = 0.001 and 0.01 respectively) in comparison with normotensive pregnant women. Conversely, the serum levels of IL-10 in normotensive women were significantly higher compared to PE patients (P = 0.01). The results of this study demonstrated that inflammatory T helper 1-type responses are increased in PE women compared to normotensive pregnant women.