{"doi":"10.1016/j.jri.2021.103464","title":"SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell responses and immune regulation in infected pregnant women","abstract":"We studied the T cell response to SARS-CoV-2 spike and non-spike peptide epitopes in eight convalescent pregnant women together with the immune monitoring that included innate tolerogenic dendritic cell populations important to maintain the immunological mother/fetus interface to address a potential risk for the antiviral cellular response in the outcome of pregnancy. Four subjects had pre-existing chronic inflammatory conditions that could have potentially affected the SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell response. Seven of eight subjects responded to SARS-CoV-2 peptides with differences within CD4+ T helper (Th) and CD8+ cytotoxic T cells (CTL). SARS-CoV-2-specific inducible regulatory T cells (iTreg) were numerous in circulation. CD4+ T cell memory included central memory T cells (TCM) and effector memory (TEM). As far as the CD8+ memory repertoire, TCM and TEM were very low or absent in eight of eight subjects and only effector cells that revert to CD45RA+, defined as TEMRA were measurable in circulation. T cells were in the normal range in all subjects regardless of pre-existing inflammatory conditions. The immune phenotype indicated the expansion and activation of tolerogenic myeloid dendritic cells including CD14+ cDC2 and CD4+ ILT-4+ tmDC. In summary, SARS-CoV-2 infection induced a physiological anti-viral T cell response in pregnant women that included SARS-CoV-2-specific iTreg with no negative effects on the tolerogenic innate dendritic cell repertoire relevant to the immune homeostasis of the maternal-fetal interface. All eight subjects studied delivered full-term, healthy infants.","journal":"Journal of Reproductive Immunology","year":2021,"id":188783,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":16,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9637,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":103765,"name":"Alba Grifoni","orcid":"0000-0002-0369-1746","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":750665,"name":"Hiral Dave","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":750114,"name":"Jasmine Wang","orcid":"0000-0001-8465-7613","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":726729,"name":"Diana Johnson","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":750115,"name":"Jennifer A. Zellner","orcid":"0000-0003-3484-786X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":55666,"name":"John Sidney","orcid":"0000-0002-0987-405X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":235308,"name":"Christina Chambers","orcid":"0000-0003-4675-7722","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":395527,"name":"Alessandra Franco","orcid":"0000-0002-4840-8182","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":395524,"name":"Li‐En Hsieh","orcid":"0000-0003-1179-2229","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":40,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:49:10.350554Z","pmid":"34953325","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}