Cytokine research

Proudly funded by the Bonnie Babes Foundation.

An important feature of early pregnancy is the establishment of lines of communication between pregnancy tissues and the lining of the womb. These communication pathways play an important role in ensuring the appropriate development of the placenta and baby. The signals that travel along these communication pathways are substances that are produced by both fetal and maternal cells. These signals include a group of factors known as cytokines.

Recent evidence suggests that an early pregnancy loss may be associated with the failure of these cytokine signals or inappropriate signals being sent. By investigating the involvement of cytokine signals in the establishment of early pregnancy and in early pregnancy loss, it is hoped that it will be possible to provide women with better information about the risk of subsequent loss, to develop diagnostic and predictive tests and possibly to discover a means to prevent recurrent early pregnancy loss.