Monocyte cytokine production during pregnancy

With great interest, we have read the article, “Monocytes are progressively activated in the circulation of pregnant women” [1]. In their article, the authors showed that there is progres-sive, generalized, inflammatory cell activation, characterized by progressive up-regulation of CD11a, CD54, and CD64 dur-ing pregnancy. In addition, granulocyte numbers were in-creased, and lymphocyte numbers decreased during preg-nancy. In this comprehensive paper, the authors not only showed phenotypical activation of the inflammatory cells but also func-tional activation of these cells, as they showed an increase in the percentage of monocytes spontaneously producing inter-leukin (IL)-12 in third-trimester pregnant women as compared with nonpregnant women and increased IL-1 production by stimulated second-trimester pregnant monocytes as compare