Abstract
Why Mum must be tolerant of you . . . even before you’re born!
Lachlan Moldenhauer
PhD candidate, Discipline of Obstetrics and Gynaecology,
University of Adelaide
Introduction of foreign tissue, such as an organ transplant, into the body usually initiates an immune response leading to rejection of that tissue. The fetus is a foreign tissue as it inherits genetic material from both the female and male parents. The father’s genetic material which is contained by the fetus is foreign to the mother’s immune system, therefore making it a potential target for immune rejection, like an organ transplant. In healthy pregnancies the mother’s immune system is tolerant towards the genetically foreign fetus and does not reject it. However, failure of the mother’s immune system to establish tolerance can result in a number of reproductive health problems including infertility, miscarriage or pre-term birth.
A rejection immune response is carried out by white blood cells called T cells, therefore if immune tolerance is going to occur during pregnancy these T cells must receive instructions not to attack and reject the fetus. How this process occurs is not well understood.
This research has demonstrated in mice that a number of molecules within the uterus during pregnancy, call cytokines, can prevent T cells from establishing an attack mode. Therefore, T cells are induced into a state of tolerance to allow for survival and growth of the fetus. This knowledge will assist in designing new therapeutics to treat infertility where the mother’s immune system does not produce the cytokines required to initiate immune tolerance.
