Pregnancy exerts profound impact on female immune system. The first signs of pregnancy recognition by immune system are observed even before implantation. The most visible effects are present in the local compartment, i.e. in uterine draining lymph nodes and the decidua, while peripheral changes are less obvious. In our recent paper we indicated that costimulation phenotype of APCs in spleens o...

Malaria with over 3 million deaths per year remains the foremost killer among all diseases and causes 400 000 cases of severe maternal anaemia and from 75 000-200 000 infant deaths annually in sub-Saharan Africa[1]. Malaria is more severe in pregnant women than nonpregnant women leading to altered placental pathology and fetal abnormalities[2]. The role of heat shock proteins (hsps) in infectio...

Pregnancy requires a higher functional beta cell mass and this is associated with profound changes in the gene expression profile of pancreatic islets. Taking Tph1 as a sensitive marker for pregnancy-related islet mRNA expression in female mice, we previously identified prolactin receptors and placental lactogen as key signalling molecules. Since beta cells from male mice also express prolactin...

background: the opening and closing of the implantation window is important for successful pregnancy in eutherians. the recent study demonstrated that the window of uterine receptivity was prepared by the sole action of progesterone in mice, but the mechanism to close the window remained to be elucidated. methods: the pregnant mice were ovariectomized on the evening on the third day of pregnanc...

background: aggressive embryo and receptive endometrium are necessary for successful implantation. on this time endometrium transformates to receptive state, which permits embryonic implantation. studies about embryonic implantation and endometrial receptivity are always a hot spot in the field of reproductive medicine. objective: to investigate the expression pattern of meis1 during peri-impla...

BACKGROUND Uterine smooth muscle cells exhibit ionic currents that appear to be important in the control of uterine contractility, but how these currents might produce the changes in contractile activity seen in pregnant myometrium has not been established. There are conflicting reports concerning the role of voltage-gated potassium (Kv) channels and large-conductance, calcium-activated potassi...

background: artificial stimulation of mouse oocyte, in the absence of sperm contribution, can induce its parthenogenic activation of oocyte. ultrasound is one of the newest methods for artificial activation of mammal oocytes, and its successful utilization in pig oocyte activation has been recently reported. our objective was to assess the effect of ultrasound on mouse oocyte activation. materi...