Comparison of cervicovaginal proinflammatory cytokine with fetal fibronectin and cervical length in predicting preterm labor in Egyptian women

Spontaneous preterm birth remains a significant problem allover the world despite increase research to decrease its prevalence. Strategies have been limited by inability to identify patients at risk for preterm birth, as the majority of patients don`t have historical risk factors. The development of an assay to detect cervicovaginal fetal fibronectin (fFN), proinflammatory cytokines along with transvaginal cervical length determination has greatly increased our ability to identify those patients with high risk. We performed quantitative analysis of fFN, IL-1β, IL-6 and IL-8 in cervicovaginal secretions by ELISA to predict preterm delivered patients with intact membrane and cervical dilatation of ≤ 3cm. Our results revealed marked significant increase in both cervicovaginal fetal fibronectin and IL-6 levels, and non significant increase for both cervicovaginal IL-1β and IL-8in spontaneous preterm delivered patients compared with non preterm delivered patients. Furthermore, significant correlations were found between cervical lengths and both fFN and IL-6, while no significant correlations existed with other measured inflammatory cytokines. Our results concluded that fetal fibronectin and IL-6 may add a prognostic value to that provided by sonographic cervical length in patients with preterm uterine contractions and intact membranes