The Role of the Immune System in Behavioral Strategies of Reproduction

Мошкин, М. П.; Gerlinskaya, L. A.; Evsikov, V. I.

doi:10.1262/jrd.46.341

Cited by 19 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 205 publications

(200 reference statements)

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“…Self-maintenance costs, among others, include expenses for immunity. However, although activation of immune response is a demanding process, immune maintenance is thought to be cheap and a trade-off between immune homeostasis and reproductive effort is a matter of debate 12 – 15 . To address a role of immune maintenance in reproduction, we surveyed reproductive phenotypes in mice knockout for tumor necrosis factor (TNF-KO) free of specific pathogens.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

TNFα is responsible for the canonical offspring number-size trade-off

Maslennikova

Gerlinskaya

Kontsevaya

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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There is a canonical life-history trade-off between quantity and quality of offspring, but molecular determinants for this are unknown. Here, we show that knockout of tumor necrosis factor (TNF-KO) in mice switched a relation between the number and size of developing embryos from expectedly negative to unexpectedly positive. Depletion of TNFα imbalanced humoral and trophic maintenance of embryo growth during gestation with respect to the litter size. The levels of embryotrophic GM-CSF cytokine and placental efficiency attained positive correlations with the number and size of embryos in TNF-KO females. Thus, TNFα oversees mother’s resource allocations to balance embryo growth with the number of offspring. Consequently, this suggests an intricate link between the number-size trade-off and immunity given a pivotal role of TNFα in immune homeostasis.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

TNFα is responsible for the canonical offspring number-size trade-off

Maslennikova

Gerlinskaya

Kontsevaya

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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“…Since all of the studied pathogens have other tropism than the urogenital area, it is unlikely that their influence on male sexual signals is by means of their metabolites being released in host urine. A more credible explanation of the phenomenon seems to be that a secondary effect of an infection is infection‐induced immune and neuroendocrine responses to the parasitic antigens [11,12]. One effect of the antigenic challenges on the male scent attractiveness was demonstrated in several experiments using simulation of an acquired immune response by means of an injection with strange antigens such as sheep red blood cells and a thermophilic strain of Salmonella enterica .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scent Recognition of Infected Status in Humans

Мошкин

Литвинова

Litvinova

et al. 2012

The Journal of Sexual Medicine

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Introduction There is a body of experimental evidence that mice and rats use chemical signals to avoid sexual contact with infected conspecifics. In contrast to animals, body scent of sick humans is employed only in medical diagnostics. A modification of human body odor, due to an infection, has not been studied as a potential signal for choice of a sexual partner. It might, however, be especially important for sexually transmitted infections (STI) because many such infections have no obvious external manifestations. Aim In this study, we have investigated odor pleasantness of young men infected with gonorrhea, Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Methods We collected armpit sweat and saliva from young men (17–25 years old) belonging to three groups: healthy persons (N = 16), young men infected with gonorrhea, Neisseria gonorrhoeae (N = 13), and persons recovered due to specific therapy (N = 5). The sweat samples odor was then assessed by healthy young women (17–20 years old). Concentrations of cortisol, testosterone, immunoglobulin A (IgA), and immunoglobulin G (IgG) were measured in saliva by means of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Main Outcome Measures Subjective rates of odor pleasantness, association of scent of armpit sweat with odor descriptors, stepwise regression of odor pleasantness and salivary cortisol, testosterone, IgA, and IgG. Results The odor from infected individuals was reported as less pleasant in comparison with the odor of healthy and recovered young men. The scent of infected men was more frequently associated by raters with the descriptor “putrid.” Odor pleasantness of the male sweat correlated negatively with concentration of the nonspecific salivary IgA and IgG, which was measured as an indicator of current immunoenhancement. Conclusion Perhaps, the immune-dependent reduction of the scent pleasantness in the acute phase of STI is part of an evolutionary mechanism ensuring, unconsciously, avoidance of a risky romantic partner.

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“…heterozygote and rare allele advantage, inbreeding avoidance; reviewed by Eklund 1994 andPenn &Potts 1999). However, while sexual selection is traditionally considered to include inter-and intrasexual components (Moshkin et al 2000;Moore et al 2001;Olsson et al 2003), it has not been shown whether the MHC also contributes to male competitive behaviour.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The human brain is a detector of chemosensorily transmitted HLA-class I-similarity in same- and opposite-sex relations

et al. 2005

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Studies on subjective body odour ratings suggest that humans exhibit preferences for human leucocyte antigen (HLA)-dissimilar persons. However, with regard to the extreme polymorphism of the HLA gene loci, the behavioural impact of the proposed HLA-related attracting signals seems to be minimal. Furthermore, the role of HLA-related chemosignals in same-and opposite-sex relations in humans has not been specified so far. Here, we investigate subjective preferences and brain evoked responses to body odours in males and females as a function of HLA similarity between odour donor and smeller. We show that pre-attentive processing of body odours of HLA-similar donors is faster and that late evaluative processing of these chemosignals activates more neuronal resources than the processing of body odours of HLA-dissimilar donors. In same-sex smelling conditions, HLA-associated brain responses show a different local distribution in male (frontal) and female subjects (parietal). The electrophysiological results are supported by significant correlations between the odour ratings and the amplitudes of the brain potentials. We conclude that odours of HLA-similar persons function as important social warning signals in inter-and intrasexual human relations. Such HLA-related chemosignals may contribute to female and male mate choice as well as to male competitive behaviour.

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The Role of the Immune System in Behavioral Strategies of Reproduction

Cited by 19 publications

References 205 publications

TNFα is responsible for the canonical offspring number-size trade-off

TNFα is responsible for the canonical offspring number-size trade-off

Scent Recognition of Infected Status in Humans

The human brain is a detector of chemosensorily transmitted HLA-class I-similarity in same- and opposite-sex relations

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