Desarrollo de un modelo experimental para la caracterización de la respuesta funcional del corioamnios humano

objective: this study was designed to validate and characterize a culture model of human choriamniotic membranes (hcm) that keeps their viability, integrity and capacity to reproduce a response to several stimulus associated to an infectious process, as the tissue that separates the fetal and maternal compartment. material and methods: we use hcm obtained after delivery by elective cesarean section. women with 37-40 weeks of gestation without evidence of active labor or presence of clinical an microbiological signs of intrauterine/vaginal infection. the membranes were mounted in transwell devices, allowing testing two independent compartments (chorion and amnion) by physically separating the upper and lower chambers. 500 ng/ml of lipopolysaccharide was added to amniotic or chorionic surface and secretions of tnfα was measured in both compartments by specific enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays and metalloproteinase-9 (mmp-9) secretions after stimulation with 5 ng/ml of il-1β. results: the viability test showed that the different cellular populations of the hcm keep their metabolic viability along 96 h of culture. the integrity parameters showed that the stay without morphologic and structural changes. functional markers showed that membranes responded differentially to il-1β stimulus; production of mmp-9 in chorion reached its maximum value at 4 h, while amnion reached it at 24 h. the selective stimulation of chorioamnion with lipopolysaccharide induced a differential synthesis of tnfα; the chorion was the principal producer with approximately 60% of total tnfα. conclusions: the experimental model allows to study qualitatively and quantitatively the contribution of different cellular regions of the hcm, and its response to differential stimulation with immunologic agents.