Sexual differences in immune response appear at puberty


Sexual differences in immune response appear at puberty
February 22, 2006
The differences in the male and female immune responses, which
make females more prone to autoimmune disease and males more
subject to infections, are
established during puberty.

In a study published today in the
open access journal BMC Immunology, researchers identified one
of the mechanisms responsible for the difference in immune
response between male and female mice. They show that this
sexual disparity is established during puberty and is influenced
by sex hormones. These findings have implications for studies of
autoimmunity, transplantation and vaccination.
Kanneboyina Nagaraju and Eric Hoffman's groups from the
Children's National Medical
Center, Washington DC, USA, and colleagues from other
institutions in the USA,
used microarrays to study 12,000
genes expressed in the spleen of pre-pubertal, pubertal and
post-pubertal male and female mice.


Lamason et al.'s results show that a number of genes are
upregulated in both males and females during puberty. The authors
found that genes involved in the innate immune response, which
provides an immediate defence against pathogens and involves
phagocytic cells such as macrophages, were significantly
underexpressed in pubertal and post-pubertal females. Genes
involved in the adaptive immune response, which provides a
long-lasting protection and involves antibodies or
'immunoglobulins', were overexpressed in pubertal and post-pubertal
females compared with males.

This difference in expression was not
found in pre-pubertal mice, indicating that the sexual disparity in
immune system expression is established during puberty. Lamason et
al. go on to show that the differences in immunoglobulin expression
between males and females are controlled by a gene signalling
pathway called the Fas/FasL pathway, which is modulated by the
female sex hormone estrogen.
BioMed Central

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