Research highlights importance of forgotten organ in ensuring healthy pregnancies ANI | Updated: Dec 28, 2020 13:52 IST
Washington [US], December 28 (ANI): An international research team led by the University of British Columbia (UBC) has uncovered for the first time the importance of a small gland tucked behind the sternum that works to prevent miscarriage and diabetes in pregnant women.
The organ in question is the thymus, identified in a study published today in the journal Nature as playing a significant role in both metabolic control and immunity in pregnancy.
How the immune system adapts to support mother and fetus has puzzled researchers for decades.
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Study uncovers a new paradigm for the role of the thymus in pregnancy
How the immune system adapts to pregnancy has puzzled researchers for decades. An international team of researchers, including scientists from IMBA – Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences – has now discovered that important changes in the thymus occur in order to prevent miscarriages and gestational diabetes. The results are published in the journal Nature.
Female sex hormones instruct the thymus, a central organ of the immune system, to produce specialized cells called Tregs to deal with physiological changes to arise during pregnancy, the study revealed. The researchers also found that RANK, a receptor expressed in a part of the thymus called the epithelium, is the key molecule behind this mechanism. The study is an international research effort including scientists from IMBA, the University of British Columbia, the Karolinska Institutet and the Medical University of Vie
Malfunctions in a small gland in the chest may trigger miscarriage in pregnant women, say researchers.
A developing baby – in effect a foreign object – is a huge challenge to the immune system of the mother.
The discovery by researchers that the thymus gland, situated behind the breast bone, has a key role in ensuring the baby is not rejected by the mother’s immune system will allow drug treatments to be developed to prevent miscarriages.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia and Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, writing in Nature, found that during pregnancy the thymus creates cells known as regulatory T-cells or ‘Tregs’.
Thymus gland works to prevent miscarriage, diabetes in pregnant women
An international research team led by the University of British Columbia (UBC) has uncovered for the first time the importance of a small gland tucked behind the sternum that works to prevent miscarriage and diabetes in pregnant women.
The organ in question is the thymus, identified in a study published today in the journal
Nature as playing a significant role in both metabolic control and immunity in pregnancy.
How the immune system adapts to support mother and fetus has puzzled researchers for decades. The study conducted by an international research team, including UBC s Dr. Josef Penninger reveals an answer. The researchers have found that female sex hormones instruct important changes in the thymus, a central organ of the immune system, to produce specialized cells called Tregs to deal with physiological changes that arise in pregnancy.