How our most common immune cell can influence the most common birth defect: Conversation with Dr. Suchita Nadkarni, Part 1

Many pregnancy complications have a whodunit quality to them. Scientists don't yet understand exactly why things go wrong when they go wrong, but researchers tend to agree at this point that if there are issues with the placenta, the lifeline for the fetus, they can reverberate through the pregnancy into well-known conditions like preeclampsia, intrauterine growth restriction, in some cases preterm birth, as well as playing a role in the most common congenital birth defect, which are heart defects.

When we are looking for culprits for these pregnancy complications, some scientists have considered the role of your immune system in pregnancy, but those who study the immune landscape have left out the most common white blood cell in your body: the neutrophil. Of all the white blood cells in your body, around 60% of them are neutrophils.

They're part of the innate immune system, the first responders, and they're super important in everyday life. And as it turns out, also in pregnancy. Today's guest talks about the critical role played by the neutrophil in placental development and downstream in fetal cardiac development.

Dr. Suchita Nadkarni: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/whri/people/academic-staff/items/nadkarnisuchita.html

Placental Inflammation leads to abnormal fetal heart development in the journal Circulation: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.122.061934

Neutrophils induce proangiogenic T cells with a regulatory phenotype in Pregnancy in PNAS: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1611944114