{"doi":"10.1101/2021.08.23.457408","title":"Deep immune profiling of the maternal-fetal interface with mild SARS-CoV-2 infection","abstract":"Pregnant women are an at-risk group for severe COVID-19, though the majority experience mild/asymptomatic disease. Although severe COVID-19 has been shown to be associated with immune activation at the maternal-fetal interface even in the absence of active viral replication, the immune response to asymptomatic/mild COVID-19 remains unknown. Here, we assessed immunological adaptations in both blood and term decidua from 9 SARS-exposed pregnant women with asymptomatic/mild disease and 15 pregnant SARS-naive women. In addition to selective loss of tissue-resident decidual macrophages, we report attenuation of antigen presentation and type I IFN signaling but upregulation of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines in blood monocyte derived decidual macrophages. On the other hand, infection was associated with remodeling of the T cell compartment with increased frequencies of activated CD69+ tissue-resident T cells and decreased abundance of Tregs. Interestingly, frequencies of cytotoxic CD4 and CD8 T cells increased only in the blood, while CD8 effector memory T cells were expanded in the decidua. In contrast to decidual macrophages, signatures of type I IFN signaling were increased in decidual T cells. Finally, T cell receptor diversity was significantly reduced with infection in both compartments, albeit to a much greater extent in the blood. The resulting aberrant immune activation in the placenta, even with asymptomatic disease may alter the exquisitely sensitive developing fetal immune system, leading to long-term adverse outcomes for offspring.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2021,"id":215538,"datarank":0.3335464314081298,"base_score":1.9459101490553132,"endowment":1.9459101490553132,"self_citation_contribution":0.29188652235829704,"citation_network_contribution":0.04165990904983277,"self_endowment_contribution":0.29188652235829704,"citer_contribution":0.04165990904983277,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":6,"citer_count":4,"citers_with_citation_signal":3,"citers_with_endowment":3,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9574,"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":572364,"name":"Michael Z. Zulu","orcid":"0000-0002-3203-7866","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":640093,"name":"Brianna M. Doratt","orcid":"0000-0002-8107-724X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":366004,"name":"Allen Jankeel","orcid":"0000-0003-1316-1332","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":522461,"name":"Delia F. Tifrea","orcid":"0000-0002-7531-9337","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":347748,"name":"Robert A. Edwards","orcid":"0000-0001-9145-382X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":426754,"name":"Mónica Rincón","orcid":"0000-0001-5574-585X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":523548,"name":"Nicole Marshall","orcid":"0000-0003-3105-555X","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":366007,"name":"Ilhem Messaoudi","orcid":"0000-0003-3203-2405","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":501722,"name":"Suhas Sureshchandra","orcid":"0000-0002-4141-8564","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":42,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:52:55.971300Z","pmid":"34462741","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":[]}