Editorial Team
We have often asked ourselves questions about the immunological picture of the fetus and on which mechanisms its ability to respond to possible microorganism attacks is based.
Well, a study reveals that in reality the fetus does not respond to a possible attack, as happens in humans after birth, its mechanism is based on always keeping mild immune defenses active.
But how does it activate this somewhat anomalous mode of immune function?
Research* has shown how the placenta uses a trick to simulate illness. By pretending to be under viral attack, it keeps the immune system working gently but constantly to protect the fetus from viral infections that overcome the mother's immune defenses.
So the placenta uses an unusual trick to activate the immune defenses and keep them active when there is no infection.
It creates a fake virus that keeps your immune system constantly activated, albeit moderately.
The idea that cells preemptively activate immune defenses “violates a lot of what immunologists think,” said Jonathan Kagan, an immunobiologist at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
“Because antiviral immune weapons can destroy tissue, cells typically only activate them when there’s an active threat like an infection,” Kagan explained. “Then, once the infection clears up, those weapons are turned off as quickly as possible.”
But the placenta breaks these rules, according to new research.
Somehow, she activates her defenses before they are needed and then leaves them turned on without harming herself or the fetus.
“It protects but it doesn’t harm,” said Hana Totary-Jain, an associate professor of molecular pharmacology at the University of South Florida in Tampa and an author of the research.
It took Totary-Jain and her team years to come up with an explanation: Placental cells create a virus-like copy, using RNA harvested from their own genomes, to fool their immune sensors.
It could be a sort of self-activating molecular mimicry.
Even if the molecular mimicry studied in immunology triggers autoimmune processes, which in this case does not happen, the mechanism of action is quite similar.
This research opens new therapeutic perspectives. First of all on the action of the homeopathic drug which, similarly to the cells of the placenta, provokes a response in the organism through an action that mimics the one that determines the specific symptomatology.
It will be interesting to study this new discovery in the appropriate places and correlate it to the action of the homeopathic drug.
*(During Pregnancy, a Fake 'Infection' Protects the Fetus – Quanta MagazineSINE RNA of the imprinted miRNA clusters mediates constitutive type III interferon expression and antiviral protection in hemochorial placentas, Ishani Wickramage, Jeffrey VanWye, Klaas Max, Thomas Tuschl, Umit A. Kayisli, Hana Totary-Jain, June 2023 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1)
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