Abstract
The descriptive term “Maternal Recognition of Pregnancy” was first coined by Short in 1969 at a symposium on fetal autonomy while making a radical question on how an animal can know that it is pregnant1). Ever since the discovery of an indispensable role of the corpus luteum for maintenance of pregnancy in rabbits by Fraenkel around the turn of the century, numerous scientific endeavours have continued to elucidate what and how signals from the conceptus operate to prolong functional life-span of the corpus luteum during pregnancy. To date, an abundant knowledge has accumulated to indicate that a wide variety of endocrine principles with species difference are involved in this mechanism. Apart from these endocrine recognition, owing to the great stride of advancement in reproductive immunology, it is now apparent that the mother recognizes the allogeneic embryos by responding to the paternal antigen(s) in terms of humoral and cellular immunity such as production of alloantibodies, induction of suppressor T cells and recruitment of natural killer (NK) cells at the site of implantation. Generally speaking, these immune responses are thought to alter the maternal immune system to accept the allogeneic conceptus. Therefore, the concept of pregnancy recognition should now implicate in two categories of endocrine and immune recognitions.
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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Mori, T., Kanzaki, H. (1994). Pregnancy Recognition. In: Glasser, S.R., Mulholland, J., Psychoyos, A. (eds) Endocrinology of Embryo-Endometrium Interactions. Reproductive Biology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1881-5_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1881-5_13
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