Biological complexity:pregnancy alters immunity (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, September 02, 2017, 19:35 (2639 days ago) @ David Turell

New studies show how immune cells are changed during each trimester of pregnancy:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-09-immune-pregnancy-precisely.html

"The findings, which will be published Sept. 1 in Science Immunology, reveal that there is an immune clock of pregnancy and suggest it may help doctors predict preterm birth.

"'Pregnancy is a unique immunological state. We found that the timing of immune system changes follows a precise and predictable pattern in normal pregnancy," said the study's senior author, Brice Gaudilliere, MD.

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"Although physicians have long known that the expectant mother's immune system adjusts to prevent her body from rejecting the fetus, no one had investigated the full scope of these changes, nor asked if their timing was tightly controlled. "Ultimately, we want to be able to ask, 'Does your immune clock of pregnancy run too slow or too fast?'" said Gaudilliere.

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"The study confirmed immune features of pregnancy that were already known. For instance, the scientists saw that natural killer cells and neutrophils have enhanced action during pregnancy. The researchers also uncovered several previously unappreciated features of how the immune system changes, such as the finding that activity of the STAT5 signaling pathway in CD4+T cells progressively increases throughout pregnancy on a precise schedule, ultimately reaching levels much higher than in nonpregnant individuals. The STAT5 pathway is involved in helping another group of immune cells, regulatory T cells, to differentiate. Interestingly, prior research in animals has indicated that regulatory T cells are important for maintaining pregnancy.

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"'We're especially interested in understanding more precisely what is happening very early and very late in pregnancy," Gaudilliere said. "We'd like to see if there is really a switch we can catch, a sweet spot where deviation from the norm would be maximal with pathology."

"'The immune system does not act in isolation, and we're now very interested in profiling its interplay with other aspects of mothers' biology, such as their genetics, metabolism and the body's microbial communities to come up with a holistic biological clock of pregnancy," Aghaeepour added.

Comment: The problem is easy to understand. The baby is not the mother, and is really foreign to her genetically. Therefore the immune system must adapt to tolerate the fetus. For example, in an Rh incompatibility pregnancy an Rh- mother carries a blood-type Rh+ baby and reacts to it since the immune system is not blocked from reacting as part of the overall protection. Obviously, the development of intrauterine pregnancy had to have this system in place beforehand or we would not be here. Only a designer could accomplish this. God exists.