ISTOCK, GRINVALDSDuring pregnancy, a woman’s immune system undergoes various changes as it balances protection against pathogens with tolerance of fetal antigens. But the timing of particular changes, and how they regulate the onset of labor, have so far been difficult to define. Now, using a combination of mass cytometry and computational modeling, researchers at Stanford University have described a “clock” for the immunological events leading up to birth. The findings were published today (September 1) in Science Immunology.
The study “has generated a vast amount of new and confirmatory data on how the immune system differs in pregnancy,” writes Lynne Sykes, a clinical lecturer at Imperial College London who was not involved in the work, in an email to The Scientist. “This methodology holds great potential for the authors to unravel the complex immunological changes that precede (and may predict) early miscarriage, preterm labour, [and] pre-eclampsia.”
Over the nine months of pregnancy, the mother’s immune system dials up parts of the innate immune response, such as the activity of natural killer cells, while dialing down significant aspects of the adaptive response, such as T-cell abundance. Failures in the regulation of these adjustments are now thought to be linked to complications in pregnancy, such ...
