It has been understood for some time now that a mother ’s Milk River confab her nursing baby with unsusceptibility to certain pathogens . This process of transferring antibody – the part of the immune arrangement that find and countervail the disease - causing agent – to the baby is known as “ passive unsusceptibility ” . But novel research has constitute that there may be another layer to how a mother ’s Milk River provides her minor with immunity .
Published in theJournal of Immunology , the study on mouse has discover that specific immune cell in the mother ’s Milk River reach through the wall of the infant ’s intestine and move around to the thymus – the primary lymphoid organ of the immune system . Here , the paternal cell have been discover to “ educate ” the developing cells of the babe , so that the resistant system will be able to launch an onset on the specific pathogen that the female parent has already experience but that the baby has yet to encounter . Theteam have namedthis newly described process “ maternal educational immunity ” .
While these experiment have only been carried out in mouse , the result are challenging . It intimate that a new way of vaccinating a child could be through immunise the mother .
In one serial publication of experiments , the researchers tested out their theory using the bacteriumMycobacterium tuberculosis(TB ) , the microbe responsible for for an guess 1.5 million deaths per year . They discovered that the mouse pup nursed on female that were immunized against TB were recover to make the right antibody to fight back it , despite not having been immunized themselves . If the precept described in this sketch also hold true in humans , it could be a refreshing way to treat baby in the develop earth , where the absolute majority of TB cases occur .
Currently , babies vaccinated against TB have a generally poor response , giving them immunity to the worst of the symptoms , but not preclude the pulmonary symptoms that occur in the lung .
“ We hope that by vaccinating the mother , who will finally wet-nurse the child , we will improve infant exemption against TB , ” explain Ameae Walker , who led the research , in astatement . “ It ’s like vaccinating the baby without really vaccinating the child . In some illustration , our work has shown that immunity against TB is far more effective if acquired through the Milk River than if acquired through lineal vaccination of the baby . Of of course , clinical trials will need to be conducted to examine whether this is the case in mankind . ”
