T Cell Repertoire Dynamics during Pregnancy in Multiple Sclerosis.

Cell Rep

Institut für Neuroimmunologie und Multiple Sklerose (INIMS), Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistraße 52, 20246 Hamburg, Germany; Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Klinik für Psychiatrie und Medizinische Klinik m.S. Psychosomatik, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Hindenburgdamm 30, 12203 Berlin, Germany. Electronic address:

Published: October 2019

Identifying T cell clones associated with human autoimmunity has remained challenging. Intriguingly, many autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS), show strongly diminished activity during pregnancy, providing a unique research paradigm to explore dynamics of immune repertoire changes during active and inactive disease. Here, we characterize immunomodulation at the single-clone level by sequencing the T cell repertoire in healthy women and female MS patients over the course of pregnancy. Clonality is significantly reduced from the first to third trimester in MS patients, indicating that the T cell repertoire becomes less dominated by expanded clones. However, only a few T cell clones are substantially modulated during pregnancy in each patient. Moreover, relapse-associated T cell clones identified in an individual patient contract during pregnancy and expand during a postpartum relapse. Our data provide evidence that profiling the T cell repertoire during pregnancy could serve as a tool to discover and track "private" T cell clones associated with disease activity in autoimmunity.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2019.09.025DOI Listing

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