Endocrine Abstracts

Pregnancy is a puzzling phenomenon for researches as it defies the rules of immunology. The immune system of a pregnant woman is able to both tolerate the foreign while being alert to possible harm. It is now known that paternal antigens expressed by the fetus are not ignored but actively tolerated by the maternal immune system. Pregnancy hormones may have a pivotal role on the modulation of immune cell functions. We have described the important participation of the pregnancy ...

The physiological state of pregnancy is characterised by the tolerance of the maternal immune system towards the paternal alloantigens expressed by the foetus. Recently, CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cells (Treg) were described to play an essential role for the generation and maintenance of the tolerance state. Several research groups showed that normal pregnancy in humans and mice is associated with an augmentation in the number of Treg in different organs wher...