Maternal Immune Activation, Neuro-Diversity, Auto-Immunity and Immune Issues

[Originally posted on the Homepage on Mother's Day ---

There will be EQUAL-OPPORTUNITY for Dads on Father's Day]
 
Conjecture

The THING about INFLAMMATION is that it is CODING FOR SO MANY THINGS.

So if someone were to say this is about . . .

• Infections, or
• Trauma, or
• Auto-Immunity
• Alcohol or Drug Consumption
• Smoking during pregnancy
• Toxins in the Environment

THEY WOULD ALL BE RIGHT.

Although --- Some Researchers may be able to tell the difference ---

• Pregnancy as a Time of Increased Vulnerability to Trauma, Persistent Changes in Immune Function.

 

• Adversity in early life and pregnancy are immunologically distinct from total life adversity: macrophage-associated phenotypes in women exposed to interpersonal violence

But how that shakes out at individual times and places and for individuals --- in individual times and places in history is very complicated.

Further, it is about the INDIVIDUAL, but there are SOCIETAL ASPECTS as well as GENERATIONAL ASPECTS.

• For example, if your grandmother smoked during pregancy --- You could be more at risk for "ADHD."
  • See Smoking During Pregnancy and the Risk of ADHD in the Third Generation

We're often talking about SHARED GENES -- which genes get turned on and off ---- and significantly EPIGENETICS.

There's been a rise in "AUTO-IMMUNITY" since the Black Death --- because those immune systems are the ones that survived.

• See The Black Death Shaped the Evolution of Immunity Genes

Medical Science keeps expanding the role of the IMMUNE SYSTEM and I think that may continue ---

• See from the University of Virginia School of Medicine --- The Immune System Controls Social Behavior (in Mice)

• Low Status Can Damage the Immune System --- BBC News reporting on a study at Duke University

Currently, we recognize AUTO-IMMUNITY more in WOMEN than MEN.


Thyroid Issues are very common among women and they are "The Tallest Tree in the Forest of Poly-Auto-Immunity."

Further, more and more women and medical professionals are raising the issue that there is more going on than the current Thyroid Test measures.

Finally, Maternal Immune Activation is associated with:

• ADHD
• Autism
• Bipolar Disorder
• Depression
• Schizophrenia

Modulation of human endogenous retroviruses and cytokines expression in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from autistic children and their parents (2022)

Conclusion: Herein we show that autistic children and their mothers share an intrinsic responsiveness to in vitro microenvironmental changes in expressing HERVs and pro-inflammatory cytokines.

Remarkably, the antiretroviral drug Efavirenz restores the expression of specific HERV families to values similar to those of the controls, also reducing the expression of proinflammatory cytokines but keeping the regulatory ones high.

Our findings open new perspectives to study the role of HERVs in the biological mechanisms underlying Autism.