How we might manage early immune cell trouble in the placenta: Conversation with Dr. Nadkarni, part II

  The very important role of a certain type of immune cell called neutrophils in pregnancy is the topic of today's episode. This is a continuation of the conversation we had last week with Dr. Suta NAD Carney, , who is a researcher at the William Harvey Research Institute, faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the Queen Mary University of London.

We were talking about, the work she's done to uncover the role of the most common immune cell in your body, the neutrophil in pregnancy, and the way that it might contribute to one of the most common birth defects, which are heart defects.

To briefly recap here, we used to think that neutrophils didn't play much of a role in pregnancy. The research we're talking about today highlights the role of neutrophils. Basically, they direct other immune cells to behave in an anti-inflammatory way, at the point at which the maternal tissue meets the fetal tissue.

If neutrophils aren't around to send signals that generate this anti-inflammatory environment. The environment becomes too inflammatory, which affects the collagen that's protecting the placental barrier. That barrier becomes dysfunctional and maternal immune cells get loose and interrupt.

Placental Inflammation leads to Abnormal Embryonic Heart Development:  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10022676/