title: Uterine autonomic nerve innervation plays a crucial role in regulating rat uterine mast cell functions during embryo implantation.
abstract: To explore the potential mechanism of how uterine innervations would affect the uterine mast cell (MC) population and functions during the periimplantation. We herein first examined the consequence of uterine neurectomy on embryo implantation events. We observed that amputation of autonomic nerves innervating the uterus led to on-time implantation failure in rats. Exploiting MC culture and ELISA approaches, we then further analyzed the effect of neurectomy on cellular histamine levels and its release from uterine MCs, to elucidate the relation of the autonomic nerves and local cellular immunity in the uterine during early pregnancy. We observed that disconnection of autonomic nerve innervation significantly increased the population of uterine MCs. Most interestingly, these increased number of uterine MCs in neuroectomized rats contained a much reduced cellular level of histamine. Our subsequent challenge experiments revealed that uterine MCs in nerve amputated rats exhibited enhanced histamine releasing rate in response to substance P and antiIgE, suggesting loss of nerve innervation in the uterus not only increases the population of uterine MCs, but also facilitates the release of histamine from MCs, thus subsequently interfere with the normal implantation process. Collectively, our findings provide a new line of evidence supporting the concept that immune-neuro-endocrine network plays important role during pregnancy establishment and maintenance.
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science Shandong Agricultural University, Taian 271018, China.
authors.forename: Xue-Jun
authors.initials: XJ
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.forename: Li-Bo
authors.initials: LB
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Hui-Li
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Qiao
authors.forename: Ze-Pei
authors.initials: ZP
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.forename: Jing-Jing
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Fa
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001341:Autonomic Nervous System / Q000276:immunology / Q000502:physiology*; D010064:Embryo Implantation / Q000276:immunology / Q000502:physiology*; D004797:Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay; D005260:Female; D006636:Histamine Release / Q000502:physiology; D007111:Immunity, Cellular / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D008407:Mast Cells / Q000276:immunology / Q000502:physiology*; D011247:Pregnancy; D011897:Random Allocation; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D014599:Uterus / Q000166:cytology / Q000276:immunology / Q000294:innervation*