TY  - JOUR
A1  - Prelog, Martina
A1  - Almanzar, Giovanni
A1  - Eberle, Gernot
A1  - Lassacher, Andrea
A1  - Specht, Christian
A1  - Koppelstaetter, Christian
A1  - Heinz-Erian, Peter
A1  - Trawöger, Rudolf
A1  - Bernhard, David
T1  - Maternal cigarette smoking and its effect on neonatal lymphocyte subpopulations and replication
JF  - BMC Pediatrics
N2  - Background

Significant immunomodulatory effects have been described as result of cigarette smoking in adults and pregnant women. However, the effect of cigarette smoking during pregnancy on the lymphocyte subpopulations in newborns has been discussed, controversially.

Methods

In a prospective birth cohort, we analyzed the peripheral lymphocyte subpopulations of smoking (SM) and non-smoking mothers (NSM) and their newborns and the replicative history of neonatal, mostly naive CD4 + CD45RA + T cells by measurements of T-cell-receptor-excision-circles (TRECs), relative telomere lengths (RTL) and the serum cytokine concentrations.

Results

SM had higher lymphocyte counts than NSM. Comparing SM and NSM and SM newborns with NSM newborns, no significant differences in proportions of lymphocyte subpopulations were seen. Regardless of their smoking habits, mothers had significantly lower naive T cells and higher memory and effector T cells than newborns. NSM had significantly lower percentages of CD4 + CD25++ T cells compared to their newborns, which was not significant in SM. There were no differences regarding cytokine concentrations in newborns of SM and NSM. However, NSM had significantly higher Interleukin-7 concentrations than their newborns. Regardless of smoking habits of mothers, newborns had significantly longer telomeres and higher TRECs than their mothers. Newborns of SM had significantly longer telomeres than newborns of NSM.

Conclusions

Apart from higher lymphocyte counts in SM, our results did not reveal differences between lymphocyte subpopulations of SM and NSM and their newborns, respectively. Our finding of significantly longer RTL in newborns of SM may reflect potential harm on lymphocytes, such as cytogenetic damage induced by smoking.
KW  - Cigarette smoking
KW  - Lymphocytes
KW  - T cell receptor excision circles
KW  - Telomeres
Y1  - 2013
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-96435
UR  - http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2431/13/57
ER  -