What role do lymph nodes play in fetal immunity?

We tend to think of lymph nodes only when they get sore or swollen, but they actually play an important role in fetal immunity. After T cells mature in the thymus, they engage the enemy on the biological battleground - the 500 to 600 peripheral lymph nodes distributed throughout the body. Once T cells have recognized the enemy, they head into the spleen where B cells are made.

The thymus doesn't change its responsiveness after birth, but the lymph nodes and spleen change big-time. In the fetus, about a quarter of the T cells in the lymph nodes and spleen are "regulatory," meaning their job is to actually prevent a child's immune system from over-responding. Immune cells from the mother that slip through the placenta into the child's body will be sequestered in the lymph nodes.

After all, that's where infections collect as you grow up and overcome, for example, a sore throat and get large tender lymph nodes in the local neck area. By not over-responding to the mother's immune cells, the fetus develops tolerance. In other words, the mother's immune cells are instructing the fetal cells to tolerate their presence.

This parental guidance might not work in teenagers, but works like a charm in the womb. These insights are helping scientists figure out how to perform safer transplantation so patients do not reject the donated organs.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.