Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Women’s reproductive ability may be related to immune system status

CHAMPAIGN, lll. – New research indicates that women’s reproductive function may be tied to their immune status. Previous studies have found this association in human males, but not females.

The study appears in the American Journal of Human Biology.

An animal’s energetic resources must be carefully allocated, said University of Illinois anthropology professor Kathryn Clancy, who led the new research. The body’s first priority is maintenance, which includes tasks inherently related to survival, including immune function, she said. Any leftover energy is then dedicated to reproduction. There is a balance between resource allocation to maintenance and reproductive efforts, and environmental stressors can lessen available resources, said Clancy, who co-directs the Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology at Illinois.

The study participants were a group of healthy, premenopausal, rural Polish women who participate in traditional farming practices. The researchers collected the women’s urine and saliva samples during the harvest season, when physical activity levels are at their peak. This physical work constrains available energetic resources. In previous studies, the highest levels of ovarian suppression occurred during the harvest season.

Researchers measured participants’ salivary ovarian hormone levels daily over one menstrual cycle. They also tested urine samples for levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a commonly used marker of inflammation.

“Depending on the other factors that you look at alongside it, CRP can tell you about immune function or it can tell you about psychosocial stress, because CRP has been correlated to both of those things in other populations,” Clancy said.

The researchers observed a negative relationship between CRP and progesterone in the Polish women – in women with high CRP, progesterone was low. Further, the researchers found that estradiol and the age of first menstruation were the strongest predictors of CRP levels.

Clancy noted that it is too early to tell whether these correlational relationships indicate a causal relationship in which inflammation suppresses ovarian hormones. However, she believes that there are two possible pathways that explain these results.

“One is that there is an internal mechanism, and this local inflammation drives higher levels of CRP, and that is what’s correlating with the lower progesterone,” she said. “The other possibility is that there is an external stressor like psychosocial or immune stress driving allocation to maintenance effort, which in turn is suppressing ovarian hormones.”

Clancy believes that her research will help women “understand their bodies better.”

“From an anthropological perspective, these trade-offs are really important because they help us understand the timing of different life events: Why does someone hit puberty when they do, why do they begin reproducing when they do, why do they space babies the way they do?” Clancy said.

“It’s really interesting to see the interplay between a person’s intentions about when and why to have children, and then their own body’s allocations to reproduction or not,” Clancy said.

Read Next

Life sciences Portrait of the research team posing together.

Minecraft players can now explore whole cells and their contents

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists have translated nanoscale experimental and computational data into precise 3D representations of bacteria, yeast and human epithelial, breast and breast cancer cells in Minecraft, a video game that allows players to explore, build and manipulate structures in three dimensions. The innovation will allow researchers and students of all ages to navigate […]

Arts Photo of seven dancers onstage wearing blue tops and orange or yellow flowing skirts. The backdrop is a Persian design.

February Dance includes works experimenting with live music, technology and a ‘sneaker ballet’

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The dance department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will present February Dance 2025: Fast Forward this week at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. February Dance will be one of the first performances in the newly renovated Colwell Playhouse Theatre since its reopening. The performances are Jan. 30-Feb. 1. Dance professor […]

Honors portraits of four Illinois researchers

Four Illinois researchers receive Presidential Early Career Award

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Four researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were named recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on young professionals at the outset of their independent research careers. The winners this year are health and kinesiology professor Marni Boppart, physics professor Barry Bradlyn, chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Ying […]

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010