School of Medicine, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, Australia.
Child Health Research Unit, Barwon Health, Geelong, VIC, Australia.
Front Immunol. 2022 Feb 8;12:830049. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.830049. eCollection 2021.
Early childhood is characterised by repeated infectious exposures that result in inflammatory responses by the innate immune system. In addition, this inflammatory response to infection is thought to contribute to the epidemiological evidence linking childhood infection and adult non-communicable diseases. Consequently, the relationship between innate immune responses and inflammation during early life may inform prevention of NCDs later in life. In adults, non-genetic host factors such as age, sex, and obesity, strongly impact cytokine production and circulating mediators, but data in children are lacking. Here, we assessed cytokine responses and inflammatory markers in a population of healthy preschool children (mean age 4.2 years). We studied associations between cytokines, plasma inflammatory markers and non-genetic host factors, such as sex, age, adiposity, season, and immune cell composition. Similar to adults, boys had a higher inflammatory response than girls, with IL-12p70 and IL-10 upregulated following TLR stimulation. Adiposity and winter season were associated with increased circulating inflammatory markers but not cytokine production. The inflammatory markers GlycA and hsCRP were positively associated with production of a number of cytokines and may therefore reflect innate immune function and inflammatory potential. This dataset will be informative for future prospective studies relating immune parameters to preclinical childhood NCD phenotypes.
儿童早期反复接触感染原，导致固有免疫系统发生炎症反应。此外，这种感染后的炎症反应被认为与儿童感染和成年后非传染性疾病之间的流行病学证据有关。因此，固有免疫反应和儿童早期生活中的炎症之间的关系可能为以后预防非传染性疾病提供信息。在成年人中，非遗传宿主因素，如年龄、性别和肥胖，强烈影响细胞因子的产生和循环介质，但儿童的数据却很缺乏。在这里，我们评估了一群健康学龄前儿童（平均年龄 4.2 岁）的细胞因子反应和炎症标志物。我们研究了细胞因子、血浆炎症标志物与非遗传宿主因素（如性别、年龄、肥胖、季节和免疫细胞组成）之间的关系。与成年人相似，男孩的炎症反应高于女孩，TLR 刺激后 IL-12p70 和 IL-10 上调。肥胖和冬季与循环炎症标志物的增加有关，但与细胞因子的产生无关。炎症标志物 GlycA 和 hsCRP 与多种细胞因子的产生呈正相关，因此可能反映固有免疫功能和炎症潜力。这个数据集将为未来与免疫参数相关的儿童非传染性疾病前临床表型的前瞻性研究提供信息。
