Background: Despite advances in medicine, there is currently no effective procedure for predicting and the early diagnosis of preterm premature rupture of membranes (pPROM).
Objectives: To apply measurements of selected biochemical markers of inflammation for diagnosing cases of pPROM without clinical signs of infection.
Material and methods: This is a prospective cohort study. Three groups were compared, a study group: 82 women between 22 and 37 weeks of pregnancy hospitalized due to pPROM, a control group: 64 women between 22 and 37 weeks of pregnancy in the 1st stage of preterm labor with intact fetal membranes, and a reference group: 99 women between 37 and 42 weeks of pregnancy in the 1st stage of physiological term labor and intact fetal membranes. To assess the concentration of cytokines, a multiplex method was used for measurement of: IGFBP-1, IGFBP-2, BDNF, L-selectin, E-selectin, PECAM-1, ICAM-1, and VCAM-1, MIP-1d, MIP-3b, BLC, eotaxin-1, and eotaxin-2.
Results: Out of the studied molecules, we found that eotaxin-2 concentrations in the study group were significantly lower than in the control group and the reference group: 9.22 pg/mL compared to 13.76 pg/mL and 14.14 pg/mL (p = 0.014), respectively. We also showed that serum concentration of eotaxin-2 below 8.24 pg/mL could be used as a cut-off level of pPROM (sensitivity: 0.58; specificity: 0.57).
Conclusions: Findings of significant differences in eotaxin-2 can be the basis for further studies on the use of this molecule as a biochemical marker of pPROM.
Keywords: cytokine; molecular biology; preterm labor; preterm rupture of membranes.