CONCURRENCE OF HIGH-LEVELS OF INTERFERON-ALPHA AND INTERFERON-BETA INCORD AND MATERNAL BLOOD AND SIMULTANEOUS PRESENCE OF INTERFERON IN TROPHOBLAST IN AN AFRICAN POPULATION

A high concentration of interferon-alpha (IFN-alpha) (>5 U/ml) in cord blood was used as the criterion for establishing our study group, In a collection from deliveries by 269 Kenyan women, 16 such cord samples with matching maternal blood and placental biopsies were identified, These 16 were studied in detail together with 23 randomly selected amo ng those with low cord IFN-alpha levels, The levels of IFN- in retal b lood correlated with levels in their mothers for both IFN-alpha and be ta but not for IFN-gamma, IFN-alpha was furthermore demonstrated in vi llous and decidual trophoblast from 15 (94%) placentae from donors wit h high IFN-alpha in the cord blood but not in the placenta of any low IFN level donors, In contrast, IFN-beta was not demonstrated in any pl acenta. These observations suggest simultaneous IFN induction in the t hree compartments, transplacental IFN transport, or trophoblast produc tion of IFN to both circulations. Looking for IFN inducers, we did ser ologic tests for nonspecific indicators of inflammation and for specif ic virus and protozoan infections, but these showed no relation to ele vated IFN levels, Immunohistology also revealed no evidence of a numbe r of placental infections, The cause of the high levels of IFN-alpha c ould still be infectious but remains unexplained and may be noninfecti ous.