The fetus is resistant to influenza

A new study shows that developing fetuses are resistant to the flu vaccine that is injected into the mother. This finding may help end the debate about how the immune system is formed in the fetus.

Through the chord, a new born baby has acquired 6 months of antibodies from the mother, thus being able to resist the allergens and viruses around her. But it was discovered that it was possible that the child could equip the immune system from just before birth.

A fetus contains a lot of immune cells but immune researchers believe that these cells are too weak and cannot resist allergies or molecules.

This conclusion is because people have never found specific antigenic antibodies in the umbilical cord blood. Instead, immunologist researchers believe that a fetus can only fight infection through the mother's immune system.

But Rachel Miller, an allergy researcher and immunologist at Columbia University, believes the fetal immune system is more developed than what researchers think.

Baby is equipped with the immune system before birth.

Miller and his colleagues studied a group of 126 women. They are people who have been vaccinated against the flu during pregnancy. When these women gave birth, the researchers sampled the umbilical cord blood of each newborn baby.

They collected 70 samples that could be used to study and use an unprecedented new technology for cord blood to observe immune responses in cells. As a result, they can specifically identify each cell to see if a fetus can produce antibodies against the flu vaccine. They found that 40% of the samples they collected had certain antigens.

Miller said they are still not sure why only some fetuses have immune reactions but she also said that it is important that anti-influenza antibodies have been found there. Some of them are IgM antibodies. This antibody is very large and cannot pass through the cord from mother to child. This means they have been produced by the fetuses themselves. The fetal immune system is fully capable of fighting infection. This is a group report published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation .

According to Aimen Shaaban, an immunologist at the University of Wisconsin said this result has helped to confirm the controversial doctrine that the fetus may have long-term immune reactions. However, he also noted that the vaccine was injected into the mother during the third trimester when the fetal immune system may have had enough time to develop. Shaaban said that if we do this study again, we should observe the fetuses right from the early pregnancy so that we can better understand and more accurately when these immune system responses start working. .

TAM HA