Funding outcome

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are chronic incurable diseases of inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, that affect women in their young adult reproductive years of life. Active IBD during pregnancy is associated with poor pregnancy outcomes (miscarriage, still birth, preterm delivery, smaller infants). Pregnant women with IBD require medications to keep their disease in remission. Many IBD medications are immunosuppressive agents that cross the placenta to the fetus. Recently, small studies have shown that these medications may suppress the bone marrow function of the newborn baby. This is important because the baby's bone marrow produces certain immune cells, one of which is CD71+ cells, that helps to prevent over-inflammatory response to the bacteria that colonize the gastrointestinal tract of the newborn baby. We have shown pilot data that pregnant women with IBD (regardless of medication) have reduced levels of CD71+ cells. We believe that infants born to mothers with IBD may have reduced levels of CD71+ cells, and that this will be associated with increased inflammation of their intestines. We will enroll pregnant women with and without IBD, and collect their blood, and the cord blood from their infants at delivery. We will measure the CD71+ cell population in the mothers and the infants, and compare between groups of mother/infant pairs. We will also collect stool samples from the infants at delivery and at 3 months of age, and analyze for inflammation markers, to see if there is association betwteen CD71 + cell population and inflammation in the gut. We plan to use the results of this study to pursue additional studies on the influence of the mother's IBD and IBD medications on the newborn baby.