RESEARCH ARTICLE
Immunomodulation by the Female Sex Hormones
F.M. Menzies1, F.L. Henriquez1, *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2009Volume: 3
First Page: 61
Last Page: 72
Publisher ID: TOIDJ-3-61
DOI: 10.2174/1874279300903010061
Article History:
Received Date: 12/01/2009Revision Received Date: 03/03/2009
Acceptance Date: 28/04/2009
Electronic publication date: 23/6/2009
Collection year: 2009
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Pregnancy is a highly regulated process, requiring strict control of the immune system in order to prevent rejection of the semiallogenic foetus. One aspect of pregnancy immunology that has been of great interest is the influence of female sex and pregnancy associated hormones, such as progesterone and oestrogen, on cells of the immune system.
This review evaluates studies investigating the ability of these hormones to modulate the function of cells of both the innate and adaptive arms of the immune system and mechanisms by which immunity to infection can be altered due to increased levels of progesterone and oestrogen. Finally, the influence of pregnancy on the most common autoimmune diseases, on toxoplasmosis and on malaria is reviewed.