Immunology of Pregnancy
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Edited By:Gil MorYale University School of Medicine New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A. ISBN: 978-0-387-30612-4 Published: 2006-04-10 This book may be purchased as an eBook (pdf) for $99, or individual chapters (pdf) may be purchased from the list below for $19. |
Reproductive Immunology is a growing area in both immunology and reproductive sciences and is helping us to better understand several complications of pregnancy. Immunology of Pregnancy is the first book to give a complete and up to date review of our knowledge related to the role of the immune system during pregnancy and the interactions between the placenta and the maternal immune system. This new title covers in detail all the different hypotheses and studies related to the immunology of implantation and provide a practical approach for the application of basic reproductive immunology research to pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia, pre-term labor and IUGR.
Chapters available from this book
Immunology of Implantation: An Introduction
Gil Mor
Cases of recurrent abortions, preeclampsia or babies born with hemolytic diseases of the new born, still puzzle us with the question “Why did your mother reject you?” Although, after looking at the complexity of the maternal-fetal immune interaction and the cases of successful pregnancies, with s...
Inherited Thrombophilias and Early Pregnancy Loss
Jens Langhoff-Roos, Michael J. Paidas, De-Hui Ku, Yale S. Arkel and Charles J. Lockwood
Inherited thrombophilias are a heterogeneous group of conditions which have been associated with a variety of pregnancy complications, including early and late fetal loss, intrauterine growth restriction, abruptio placentae, and preeclampsia.1 As the functional significance of the burgeoning list...
NK Cells and Pregnancy
Mikael Eriksson, Satarupa Basu and Charles L. Sentman
Natural killer cells are found in large numbers in the endometrium and decidua, and data suggest that NK cell functions and interactions with fetal-derived trophoblasts can have a profound impact on pregnancy. Altered NK cell numbers and activity have been associated with a variety of clinical co...
Indoleamine 2,3 Dioxygenase dependent T cell Suppression and Pregnancy
Babak Baban, Phillip R. Chandler and Andrew L Mellor
Viviparity remains an immunological paradox despite increased knowledge of immunological processes that occur during mammalian pregnancy. The maternal immune system protects both mother and fetus from invading pathogens during gestation, but also has to maintain immunological tolerance towards th...
Actions of Seminal Plasma Cytokines in Priming Female Reproductive Tract Receptivity for Embryo Implantation
Sarah A. Robertson, John J. Bromfield, Danielle J. Glynn, David J. Sharkey and Melinda J. Jasper
Embryo implantation is critically dependent on a supportive uterine environment. Uter ine receptivity is the culmination of a cellular and molecular transformation mediated locally by paracrine signals under the governance of ovarian steroid hormones, with cells and cytokines of the immune system...
Leukemia Inhibitory Factor in Reproduction
Levent M. Senturk and Aydin Arici
To describe the clinical findings and implications of leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) in human reproduction. Leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) is a pleiotropic cytokine of the interleukin-6 family and has different biological actions in various tissue systems. Although named for its ability to in...
IL-10 and Pregnancy
Shaun P. Murphy and Surendra Sharma
Soon after the principles of nonself immunological recognition were discovered, it was realized that the state of pregnancy seemingly presents a paradox. In an outbreed popula tion, half of the fetal genes are paternal, thus the fetus may be considered a semi-allograft. Yet, unlike the outcome of...
MHC Molecules of the Preimplantation Embryo and Trophoblast
Martina Comiskey, Carol M. Warner and Danny J. Schust
The mechanisms of protection of the allogeneic fetus from the maternal immune response during pregnancy remain mysterious more than fifty years after the paradox of maternal tolerance was first raised by Peter Medawar. Preimplantation embryos express paternal antigens early in development. After ...
The Nature and Role of the Decidual T Cells
Lucia Mincheva-Nilsson and Vladimir Baranov
The immunological paradox of mammalian pregnancy is the acceptance of the fetus, a semiallogeneic allograft that normally should provoke an immune response of the maternal T cells leading to fetal rejection. In this chapter the current understanding of decidual T-cell immunobiology is re...
The Eutherian Fetoembryonic Defense System Hypothesis: An Update
Gary F. Clark, Anne Dell, Howard Morris and Manish S. Patankar
All sexually reproducing organisms produce gametes that must be protected from immune challenge. Recent data indicates that the majority of the carbohydrate sequences that coat the murine zona pellucida are also upregulated on activated lymphocytes, and some participate in gamete binding. This ov...
The Role of Regulatory T Cells in Materno-Fetal Tolerance
Varuna R. Aluvihare and Alexander G. Betz
Maternal immune tolerance to paternal allo-antigens expressed by the fetus is a precondition of successful pregnancy in viviparous mammals. This occurs despite exposure of the maternal immune system to potentially immunogenic fetal tissue. Local immune evasion mechanisms are thought to prevent ma...
Potential Role of Glucocorticoids in the Pathophysiology of Intrauterine Growth Restriction (IUGR)
Seth Guller, Yuehong Ma and Men-Jean Lee
Although the etiology of intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and preeclampsia (PE) remains unclear, most investigators attribute the initial “insult” to poor utero-placental perfusion due to defective trophoblast invasion that ultimately compromises fetal well-being.1-3 The resultant hypoxia c...
Macrophages and Pregnancy
Gil Mor, Roberto Romero, Vikki M. Abrahams
During implantation, apoptosis is critical for the appropriate tissue remodeling of the maternal decidua and invasion of the developing embryo. Yet the regulation of apoptosis is also imperative for a successful pregnancy. The quick and effective removal of apoptotic cells by tissue macrophages r...
The Regulation of Human Trophoblast Apoptosis and Survival During Pregnancy
Shawn L. Straszewski-Chavez and Gil Mor
Apoptosis occurs in the villous trophoblast of normal placentas throughout pregnancy, but with higher frequency near term in comparison to the first trimester. In pregnancies complicated by preeclampsia or intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR), a greater incidence of villous and extravillous tro...
Toll Like Receptors and Pregnancy
Vikki M. Abrahams and Gil Mor
The maternal-fetal interface represents an immunologically unique site that must promote tolerance to the allogenic fetus, whilst maintaining host defense against a diverse array of possible pathogens. Clinical studies have shown a strong association between certain pregnancy complications and in...
Immunology and Pregnancy Losses: HLA, Autoantibodies and Cellular Immunity
Joanne Kwak-Kim, Joon Woo Kim and Alice Gilman-Sachs
Pregnancy loss is the one of the most common obstetrical complications. The majority of pregnancy losses are random or isolated incidences that in many cases are related to genetic abnormalities. However, 2-5 % of reproductive age women experience recurrent miscarriages.1,2 Recurrent pregnancy lo...
Mamamalian Reproductive Tract and Placentation
Susan Richman and Frederick Naftolin
Phylogenetic analysis suggests that the internalization of reproduction and the develop ment of hemochorial placentation have been accompanied by conservation of primitive genitourinary genes. The products include the renin-angiotensin system and the innate immune system. This explains what might...
Interleukin-1 and Implantation
Jan-S. Krussel, Jens Hirchenhain, Andrea Schanz, Alexandra P. Hess, Hong-Yuan Huang, Carlos Sim—n and Mary Lake Polan
Infertility and pregnancy wastage affect one of every nine couples in Western Europe and in the United States. The molecular events of embryonic attachment to the endometrial epithelium and subsequent invasion and nidation into the stroma have long been of interest, scientifically to reproductive...
B7 Family Molecules in the Placenta
Margaret G. Petroff
The mechanisms of acceptance of the fetus by the maternal immune system are mediated in part by immunomodulatory proteins expressed by placental cells. The recent discovery of novel members of the B7 family of immunomodulators has prompted much excitement among the scientific community because of...
Characterization of Human Dendritic Cells at the Maternal-Fetal Interphase
U. Kammerer, L. Rieger, A. Honig and E. Kampgen
The unusual tolerance against fetal antigens is still one of the greatest miracles of pregnancy. Dealing with reproductive immunology, the question arises as to how the maternal immune system handles the foreign fetal antigens leading to that tolerance. Focussing on the various subsets of immunoc...
The Role of Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone (CRH) on Implantation and Immunotolerance of the Fetus
Sophia N. Kalantaridou, Antonis Makrigiannakis, Emmanouil Zoumakis and George P. Chrousos
The hypothalamic neuropeptide corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), as well as its receptors, have been identified in several reproductive organs, including the endometrial glands, the decidualized endometrial stroma and the placental trophoblast, synctiotrophoblast and decidua.1-9 “Reproductive...
Bi-directional Cell Trafficking During Pregnancy: Long-term Consequences for Human Health
Kristina M. Adams and J. Lee Nelson
During pregnancy some cells traffic between the fetus and mother and recent studies indicate low levels persist in the respective hosts decades later. Microchimerism (Mc) refers to a small population of cells or DNA harbored by one individual that derive from a genetically distinct individual. Pe...
Th1/Th2 Balance of the Implantation Site in Humans
Shigeru Saito, Satomi Miyazaki and Yasushi Sasaki
Successful embryo implantation requires the synchronization of embryo development and uterine preparation. The embryo must have developed to the blastocyst stage and the endometrium must be in a receptive phase. Wilcox et al1 have estimated that 65% of conceptions end in unrecognized losses. Thes...
