sarahs mum said:
Immune system ‘negotiations’ stop mom’s body from attacking her fetushttps://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/immune-system-negotiations-stop-mom-s-body-attacking-her-fetus
One of pregnancy’s most baffling aspects has been why the mother’s immune system doesn’t destroy the developing fetus, given that—much like an invading microbe—it’s chock full of foreign material. Understanding this communication would help reduce miscarriages and other complications of pregnancy.
Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute have now found that the complexity is stunning. These complications often have roots in the earliest days of pregnancy, when the embryo starts to move into the decidua, the lining of the uterus.
They studied the gene activity of 70,000 single white blood cells. They identified 35 types of white blood cells, some new and some already known. Some move from the embryo to mother to initiate blood vessel formation. Others are killer cells that fight infection.
Then, they combed existing databases of protein interactions to determine which of these cells were interacting with each other based on these protein links.
The invading embryonic cells stimulated mother cells to make some immune cells that rein in immune responses. Also, some of the mother’s natural killer cells were peacekeepers, not warriors, preventing other immune cells from attacking the fetus.
Full article at https://sci-hub.tw/10.1038/s41586-018-0698-6
