Maternal blood inflammatory marker levels increased in fetuses with ventriculomegaly

Qiang Li; Xin-Wei Ju; Jing Xu; Jiuhong Jiang; Chang Lu; Xing-Da Ju

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2022.998206

Maternal blood inflammatory marker levels increased in fetuses with ventriculomegaly

Front Hum Neurosci. 2022 Dec 5:16:998206. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.998206. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Qiang Li¹, Xin-Wei Ju², Jing Xu³, Jiuhong Jiang⁴, Chang Lu^{1

5}, Xing-Da Ju^{1

6}

Affiliations

¹ School of Psychology, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China.
² Department of Radiology, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China.
³ School of Life Sciences, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China.
⁴ School of Information Science and Technology, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China.
⁵ Jilin Provincial Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Brain Development, Changchun, China.
⁶ Autism Centre of Excellence, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China.

Abstract

Background: Fetal ventriculomegaly (VM) is one of the most common abnormalities of the central nervous system (CNS), which can be significantly identified by brain anomalies prenatally by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Aberrant white blood cells (WBCs) levels indicate that the maternal is suffering from the infection. Previous studies have confirmed that prenatal infection can affect fetal brain structure, but there is no research revealed the association between maternal blood parameters with fetal VM until now.

Methods: We measured the width of the lateral ventricle of 142 fetuses, which were divided into the fetal VM group (n = 70) and the normal lateral ventricle group (n = 72). We compared maternal blood cell levels between the two groups and investigate potential biomarkers of fetal VM.

Result: High levels of maternal WBC and neutrophil (NE#) levels were observed in fetuses with VM (p < 0.001), while lymphocyte percentage, monocytes (MO#), neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR), and platelet were also increased in the fetal VM group (p = 0.033, 0.027, 0.034, and 0.025, respectively). receiver-operator curve (ROC) analysis suggested that WBC and NE# counts might be useful to distinguish fetuses with enlarged lateral ventricles (AUC = 0.688, 0.678, respectively).

Conclusion: The current study emphasizes the importance of maternal infection for fetal brain growth, which could provide important information for prenatal diagnosis of CNS anomalies. Future research needs longitudinal analysis and exploration of the influence of maternal blood inflammatory marker levels on fetal brain development.

Keywords: biomarkers brain alterations; fetal ventriculomegaly; inflammatory markers; neurodevelopment; prenatal infection.