tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
During pregnancy, a mother's immune system is suppressed to protect the fetus, which is perceived as a foreign body because it is genetically different. A study in mice found that suppressed immunity during pregnancy creates a window of opportunity for the H1N1 influenza virus to infect the mother and to rapidly, within a few days, mutate into a more virulent strain. The findings appear in Cell Host & Microbe on March 8. More research is required to determine if similar viral mutations occur in pregnant humans.
"The first line of defense of the immune system, the innate immune response, is not acting quickly enough to clear the virus," says co-lead author G?lsah Gabriel, a virologist at the Heinrich Pette Institute, Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology in Hamburg, Germany. "The virus takes advantage of this permissive environment and mutates very fast. This is what influenza viruses do best. The new variants are responsible for increased virulence."
For the last century, study after study has shown that pregnant women suffer more severely from influenza than non-pregnant women. A 2010 World Health Organization analysis of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic found that pregnant women were 7 times more likely to be hospitalized and twice as likely to die from H1N1 infection than non-pregnant women.
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https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-03-dampened-immunity-pregnancy-evolution-virulent.html
"The first line of defense of the immune system, the innate immune response, is not acting quickly enough to clear the virus," says co-lead author G?lsah Gabriel, a virologist at the Heinrich Pette Institute, Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology in Hamburg, Germany. "The virus takes advantage of this permissive environment and mutates very fast. This is what influenza viruses do best. The new variants are responsible for increased virulence."
For the last century, study after study has shown that pregnant women suffer more severely from influenza than non-pregnant women. A 2010 World Health Organization analysis of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic found that pregnant women were 7 times more likely to be hospitalized and twice as likely to die from H1N1 infection than non-pregnant women.
...
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-03-dampened-immunity-pregnancy-evolution-virulent.html