Role of chemerin/CMKLR1 in the maintenance of early pregnancy

Abstract

Chemerin is a cytokine that attracts much attention in the reproductive process. This study aimed to explore the effects of chemerin and its receptor chemokine-like receptor 1 (CMKLR1) on the maintenance of early pregnancy. The expression levels of chemerin and CMKLR1 in the decidua tissues of 20 early normal pregnant women and 20 early spontaneous abortion women were examined by Western blot and real-time polymerase chain reaction analyses. CMKLR1 receptor antagonist (α-NETA) was then intrauterinely injected into normal pregnant mice model to assess its effect on the outcome of pregnancy and the phosphorylation rate of ERK1/2 in decidua tissues. We found that the expression level of chemerin in women who had experienced early spontaneous abortion was lower than in those who had experienced normal early pregnancy (P<0.01); conversely, CMKLR1 expression was higher in the former than in the latter (P<0.01). In a pregnant-mouse model, the embryo resorption rate of α-NETA group was higher than that in the negative control group (61.5% vs. 10.8%) (P<0.001). Compared with the control group, ERK1/2 phosphorylation in decidua tissues decreased in the α-NETA-treated group (P<0.01). These results suggested that the inhibition of the chemerin/CMKLR1 signaling pathway can lead to the abortion of mouse embryos, and that chemerin/CMKLR1 may play an important role in the maintenance of early pregnancy possibly by regulating ERK1/2 phosphorylation.

Keywords

chemerin / CMKLR1 / early abortion

References

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province of China (No. 2014CFB251), Hubei Province’s Outstanding Medical Academic Leader Program (No. WJ2015MA024), Hubei Province Health and Family Planning Scientific Research Project (No. JX6B105), Special Fund for Clinical Research of Chinese Medical Association — A Research and Development Project of Reproductive Medicine for Young Physician (No. 17020130682), Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine Combined Research Program of Health and Family Planning Commission of Hubei Province, Xiangyang City’s High Level Medical Talents Support Program, and Medical Academic Program of Hubei University of Arts and Science (No. 2017YXJJ02).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Xuezhou Yang, Junning Yao, Qipeng Wei, Jinhai Ye, Xiaofang Yin, Xiaozhen Quan, Yanli Lan, and Hui Xing declare that they have no conflict of interest. All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study. All institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

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