Pregnancy enables antibody protection against intracellular infection.

ABSTRACT: Adaptive immune components are thought to exert non-overlapping roles in antimicrobial host defence, with antibodies targeting pathogens in the extracellular environment and T cells eliminating infection inside cells^1,2. Reliance on antibodies for vertically transferred immunity from mothers to babies may explain neonatal susceptibility to intracellular infections^3,4. Here we show that pregnancy-induced post-translational antibody modification enables protection against the prototypical intracellular pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. Infection susceptibility was reversed in neonatal mice born to preconceptually primed mothers possessing L. monocytogenes-specific IgG or after passive transfer of antibodies from primed pregnant, but not virgin, mice. Although maternal B

SUBMITTER: Erickson JJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9233044 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature