Stress response
Abbildung 1: Principles of the stress response. The coordinated cross talk of the three supersystems (nervous, endocrine, and immune system) may be challenged by psychological stress and ultimately affects fertility, pregnancy maintenance, and fetal health.


Keywords: Diagramm,  fertility,  Fertilität,  flowchart,  Stress,  Stress

Stress response
Abbildung 2: Central stress response and elements of stress response execution. In response to the perception of psychological stress, the central stress reponse leads to the activation of the HPA axis, which causes the release of CRH, ACTH, and PRL and a down-regulation of GnRH and LH. Peripheral elements of stress response execution are subsequently activated, including the glucocorticoids, catecholamines, and neurotrophins. In mice, stress exposure has been shown to result in decrease of progesterone and possibly estradiol. CRH = corticotropinreleasing hormone; ACTH = adrenocorticotropic hormone; PRL = prolactin; GnRH = gonadotropin-releasing hormone; LH = luteinising hormone; HPA = hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal.


Keywords: Diagramm,  flowchart,  Stress,  stress response

Immunity´s adaption - Pregnancy
Abbildung 3: Immunity’s adaptation to pregnancy. Spatial adjacencies of invasive “histoincompatible” cytotrophoblast cells and maternal immune cells at the interface of fetal and maternal tissues guarantees nourishment of the fetus, but may provoke fetal rejection. Such spatial adjacencies are displayed on the left part of the figure, the right part reveals the in situ appearance in human deciduas basalis at gestation week 10, invasive trophoblast cells have been labelled by immunohistochemistry employing anti-cytokeratin antibody (magnification ×40). Tolerance mechanisms evolve in the process of immunity’s adaptation to pregnancy comprise the predominance of anti-inflammatory, Th2 cytokines over pro-inflammatory Th1 cytokines, the decidual expression of indoleamine 2, 3-dioxygenase (INDO), the presence of CD4+CD25bright regulatory T (Treg) cells, and the synthesis of asymmetric IgG antibodies (AAbs). In addition, it has become apparent in the past few years that dendritic cells (DCs) seem to be an essential regulatory cell subset at the feto-maternal interface in mediating tolerance.


Keywords: cytotrophoblast,  histological examination,  Histologisches Präparat,  Schema,  scheme,  Zytotrophoblast