Activation of the neonatal immune system in healthy neonates within hours of birth.

To better understand the transitional immune events immediately post birth to help in both predicting and assisting neonatal response to infection by monitoring the immune profile of neonates via analysis of paired samples of cord blood and heel prick blood taken at varying times post term delivery by caesarean section.
Conclusion:
Our study showed rapid changes in immune cell populations within hours of birth; specifically increased proliferation in effector T cells (but not regulatory T cells) that exhibited an increase in cytokine producing ability and also an increase in the percentage of CD3 T cells over this short time frame. This indicates that the mobilisation of the immune system is immediate post birth, presumably as a response to sudden exposure to the external environment, antigen or stress. Internal controls were ran in each independent experiment.