Scientists have uncovered the whole mechanism of rejection of fetal tissues during pregnancy. The findings are expected to be a breakthrough in the development of vaccines to prevent premature births and other pregnancy related complications.
Pregnancy stimulates the cells of the mother that decides the materials to be accepted by the body. A fetus contains material inherited from both the mother and the father. It increases the chances of the mother's body rejecting the pregnancy, by considering the antigens from the father as foreign.
Researchers from University of Minnesota and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center found the CD4 T cells helping in recognizing the fetal antigens and providing protection from the mother's immune system in subsequent pregnancy.
"We show definitively immune suppressive regulatory CD4 cells can form immunological memory," Dr. Sing Sing Way, a physician researcher in Infectious Diseases at Cincinnati Children's and the study's senior author, said in a news release.
"These memory features shown in pregnancy illustrate why complications become reduced in subsequent compared with primary pregnancy, but can also be broadly applied to new ways to better control the stringent balance between immune stimulation and suppression for preventing autoimmune diseases."
Way and colleagues are now planning to use their findings for developing vaccines against premature birth and autoimmune disorders, like juvenile idiopathic arthritis and type 1 diabetes.
"Knowing this, we can design vaccines that specifically target immune suppressive T cells. Current vaccines exclusively target immune activating T cells. With the polio vaccine, for example, vaccination is designed to induce long-lasting immune-activating cells that eradicate the virus with later infection," Dr. Way said.
"A vaccine that targets the expansion and retention of immune suppressive cells would allow selective silencing of undesired responses and prevent them from attacking the body."
Findings of the study have been published in the journal Nature.
Babies born before 37 weeks of gestational age are known as premature babies. According to CDC, more than 500,000 babies (one in every eight) are born prematurely every year in the country. Premature birth is one of the leading causes of infant death and long-term neurological disabilities in American children.
Premature babies are at higher risks of developing many health problems like intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, breathing/ respiratory problems, feeding /digestive problems and vision/hearing loss.
