Fol. Biol. 2019, 65, 221-226
Maternal Allergy Status Has No Impact on Neonatal Immune Responses to Allergen Stimuli
1Institute of Immunology and Microbiology, First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
2Institute for the Care of Mother and Child, Prague, Czech Republic
Received August 2019
Accepted October 2019
Due to the increasing incidence of allergic diseases, there is a strong need to identify a prognostic marker pointing to increased risk of allergy development allowing introduction of early preventive measures. Cord blood seems to be a good source for searching for such marker. The capacity of cord blood cells to respond to common allergens could point to increased predisposition to later allergy development. In our study, cytokines typical of Th1 (IFN-γ), Th2 (IL-5, IL-13) and Treg (IL-10) immune responses were followed at both the level of gene expression and cytokine secretion in cord blood cells of newborns of healthy mothers (children with relatively low risk of allergy development) and allergic mothers (children with relatively high risk of allergy development) stimulated by allergens (pollen from birch and timothy grass, house dust mite, ovalbumin). We have not observed any difference in the response of cord blood cells of neonates of healthy and allergic mothers to allergen in vitro. Both gene expression and secretion of cytokines in response to allergen stimulation were comparable with the unstimulated controls. It seems that early postnatal events will be more decisive for future allergy development than prenatal sensitization of the foetal immune system with allergen in utero in allergic mothers.
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Funding
This work was supported by AZV 15-26877A and Charles University research project Progres Q25/LF1.
References
Copyright
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
