Evaluation of the effects of nanocurcumin on the secretion of inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines in patients with preeclampsia

Abstract

Preeclampsia is a multiorgan syndrome with significant maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality and hallmarked with hypertension and proteinuria. There is also growing evidences about the role of immune system imbalance including uncontrolled inflammatory response and decreased immunoregulatory mechanism in pathogenesis of PE. In this article, we investigate the effect of nanocurcumin, as an anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative substance, on PBMCs of PE patients.

Materials and methods:

Peripheral blood of 30 PE patients and 30 healthy pregnant women was taken. The frequency of Treg and Th17 cells were evaluated by flowcytometry among the PBMCs of the subjects. Subsequently, the cytotoxicity effect of different concentration of nano-curcumin, was evaluated in PBMCs using MTT assay. The gene expression of transcription factors and cytokine secretion of Treg and Th17 cells, were evaluated among PBMCs, with and without nano-curcumin treatment in PE patients and in control group.

Results: The flowcytometry analysis showed a higher frequency of Th17 (p=0.0005) and reduced population of Treg cells among PBMCs of PE patients, when compared to control group (p=0.0194). After PBMCs incubation with nano-curcumin, Th17 associated transcription factors, RORɣt (p=0.0216) and STAT3 (p=0.0144) were significantly upregulated, alongside with secretion of IL-6 (p= 0.0292), IL-17 (p= 0.0421), IL-21 (p= 0.0265) and IL-23 (p= 0.0372). In contrast, nano-curcumin was able to upregulate FoxP3 expression (p= 0.0324) and IL-10 (p= 0.0465), TGF-β (p= 0.0418) secretion in PBMCs of patients.