AUTHOR=Rival Claudia , Setiady Yulius , Samy Eileen T. , Harakal Jessica , Tung Kenneth S. K. TITLE=The Unique Neonatal NK Cells: A Critical Component Required for Neonatal Autoimmune Disease Induction by Maternal Autoantibody JOURNAL=Frontiers in Immunology VOLUME=5 YEAR=2014 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2014.00242 DOI=10.3389/fimmu.2014.00242 ISSN=1664-3224 ABSTRACT=
Human maternal autoantibodies can trigger autoimmune diseases such as congenital heart block (CHB) in the progeny of women with lupus or Sjogren’s disease. The pathogenic effect of early autoantibody (autoAb) exposure has been investigated in a murine neonatal autoimmune ovarian disease (nAOD) model triggered by a unique ZP3 antibody. Although immune complexes (IC) are formed in adult and neonatal ovaries, ZP3 antibody triggers severe nAOD only in <7-day-old neonatal mice. Propensity to nAOD is due to the uniquely hyper-responsive neonatal natural killer (NK) cells that lack the inhibitory Ly49C/I receptors. In nAOD, the neonatal NK cells directly mediate ovarian inflammation and oocyte depletion while simultaneously promoting