ArticleNature communications2022
On maternity and the stronger immune response in women.
Article in Nature communications, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Murine models of neovascular AMD revisited: Mechanistic pathways, immune-metabolic crosstalk, and the impact of aging and sex.Experimental eye research · 2026Review
- Socioeconomic disparities in survival of patients with superficial colorectal cancer.Discover oncology · 2026Article
- Female reproductive status and ecological conditions impact the magnitude of sex differences in human immune status across the lifespan.Research square · 2026Article
- Medical gas plasma modifies Nrf2 signaling in diabetic wound healing.Journal of advanced research · 2026Article
- Trends in Cerebrovascular Disease Mortality Among Alzheimer Patients in Older Adults Across the USA: A CDC Wonder Analysis.Current Alzheimer research · 2026Article
- Article
- Reframing the significance of menstruation: evolutionary insights from an organismal-relational perspective.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2025Article
- Salt sensitivity of blood pressure: mechanisms and sex-specific differences.Nature reviews. Cardiology · 2025Review
- Virulence and Vertically Transmitted Pathogens: The Role of Costs Paid by Co-Evolving Hosts in a Self-Regulating Population.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Understudied Populations in Radiation Exposure Research: Needs, Challenges, and Mitigation Strategies.Radiation research · 2025Article
- Circulating Epstein-Barr Virus Antibody Levels as a Biomarker of Socioecological Adversity in Amazonian Ecuador.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- Sex-specific immunocompetence: resistance and tolerance can both be futile but not under the same circumstances.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- Association of Preoperative Leukocyte-to-Albumin Ratio with Short- and Long-Term Outcomes After Valvular Heart Surgery: A Retrospective Cohort Study.Journal of inflammation research · 2025Article
- Association between prognostic nutritional index and all-cause mortality among intestinal obstruction patients in the intensive care unit: a retrospective study.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- Article
- Bioactivity Profiling ofPharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Preoperative splenic area as a prognostic biomarker of early-stage non-small cell lung cancer.Cancer imaging : the official publication of the International Cancer Imaging Society · 2023Article
- Sex Differences in Offspring of Preeclamptic Pregnancies.Current opinion in physiology · 2023Article
- Patterns of toxicity burden for FDA-approved immune checkpoint inhibitors in the United States.Journal of experimental & clinical cancer research : CR · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Medical research reports that women often exhibit stronger immune responses than men, while pathogens tend to be more virulent in men. Current explanations cannot account for this pattern, creating an obstacle for our understanding of infectious-disease outcomes and the incidence of autoimmune diseases. We offer an alternative explanation that relies on a fundamental difference between the sexes: maternity and the opportunities it creates for transmission of pathogens from mother to child (vertical transmission). Our explanation relies on a mathematical model of the co-evolution of host immunocompetence and pathogen virulence. Here, we show that when there is sufficient vertical transmission co-evolution leads women to defend strongly against temperate pathogens and men to defend weakly against aggressive pathogens, in keeping with medical observations. From a more applied perspective, we argue that limiting vertical transmission of infections would alleviate the disproportionate incidence of autoimmune diseases in women over evolutionary time.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.