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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Neonatology
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fped.2025.1572836
This article is part of the Research TopicPlasticity of the Haematopoietic Niche: from Embryonic Development to Aging and DiseaseView all 6 articles
Faster postnatal decline in hepatic erythropoiesis than granulopoiesis in human newborns
Provisionally accepted
Petra Janovska1
Kristina Bardova1Zuzana Prouzova2,3Ilaria Irodenko1Tatyana Kobets1Eliska Haasova1Lenka Steiner Mrazova4Viktor Stranecky4Stanislav Kmoch4
Martin Rossmeisl1
Petr Zouhar5*
Jan Kopecky1*- 1Institute of Physiology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia
- 2Faculty Hospital Královské Vinohrady, Prague, Prague, Czechia
- 3General University Hospital in Prague, Prague, Prague, Czechia
- 4First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Prague, Czechia
- 5Laboratory of Adipose Tissue Biology, Institute of Physiology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (ASCR), Prague, Prague, Czechia
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Background: During human foetal development, the liver is the primary site of blood cell production, but this activity declines in the third trimester and postnatally as haematopoiesis shifts to bone marrow. In humans, this postnatal decline is not well characterized due to the scarcity of appropriate samples.Objective: To characterize the effect of (i) gestational age at birth and (ii) length of survival after birth on hepatic haematopoiesis across various cell lineages involved.Methods: Autopsy liver samples from 25 born-alive infants, predominantly extremely preterm newborns who died mainly between 1 day and 3 weeks after birth, were analysed.Haematopoiesis was characterized using immunohistochemical staining of established cell type-specific protein markers. RNA-sequencing data from our previous study using the same samples were also explored.Results: Haematopoiesis negatively correlates with both the duration of prenatal development and the length of postnatal survival. The effect of these two factors varies across different haematopoietic cell lineages. Prenatally and early postnatally, erythropoietic cells dominated hepatic haematopoiesis but were rapidly suppressed within three days after birth.Granulopoietic activity declined more gradually after birth. Analysis of the gene expression data revealed the possible involvement of several transcription factors in lineage-specific regulatory mechanisms.This study enhances our understanding of the postnatal decline of hepatic haematopoiesis in human newborns, highlighting the differential regulation of erythropoiesis and granulopoiesis after birth. They bring new in-depth knowledge about the biological processes critical for postnatal adaptation of human newborns.
Keywords: Newborn, postnatal, Haematopoiesis, RNA-Seq, gestation, human, Liver
Received: 07 Feb 2025; Accepted: 11 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Janovska, Bardova, Prouzova, Irodenko, Kobets, Haasova, Steiner Mrazova, Stranecky, Kmoch, Rossmeisl, Zouhar and Kopecky. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Petr Zouhar, Laboratory of Adipose Tissue Biology, Institute of Physiology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (ASCR), Prague, 142 20, Prague, Czechia
Jan Kopecky, Institute of Physiology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia
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