Fig. 6: Glucocorticoid signaling contributes to asthma susceptibility transmission.

a Concentrations of corticosterone in amniotic fluid and serum of fetuses from asthmatic or control mothers. b Model of chronic glucocorticoid treatment during pregnancy. Female mice were treated orally with water containing PBS or dexamethasone (DEX) from day 12 of gestation until the end of pregnancy. c Percentage of eosinophils in the lungs of fetuses from DEX or control mothers (day 18 of gestation). d Left: Experimental design of scRNA-seq in ILC2s sorted from fetal lungs derived from DEX or control mothers. Right: UMAP of fetal lung ILC2s divided from the different groups. Violin plots showing representative transcription factors differentially expressed between groups (e) and bar plots of their respective MFI by flow cytometry (f). g The volcano plot on the left shows expression changes in fetal lung ILC2s from DEX-treated and control mothers. The box plot on the right shows fetal lung ILC2s in the asthma model, scored using the set of genes that were upregulated in fetal lung ILC2s from DEX-treated mothers and compared between groups. h Changes in eosinophil and ILC2 counts in the lungs of adult offspring from DEX or control mothers; ILC2s were stimulated with PMA/ionomycin for 4 h, and cytokine production was assessed by intracellular staining. In (a–h), data are representative of two experiments [(a, c, f, h), fetal serum was pooled in (a)], each experiment with one to three pregnant dams per group, or one independent experiment [(d–e) and (g)] with one pregnant dam per group. Sample sizes were as follows: a Corticosterone (amniotic fluid): PBS: n = 7, OVA: n = 8; Corticosterone (fetal serum): PBS: n = 13, OVA: n = 9; c, f PBS: n = 8, DEX: n = 7; (h) PBS-PBS: n = 6, DEX-PBS: n = 7, PBS-HDM: n = 13, DEX-HDM: n = 13. In (a, c, f, h), each dot represents an individual mouse. In (a, c, f, h), data are presented as the mean ± SEM. For box plots in (g): Data are displayed as min to max, showing all points. The midline represents the median, the box indicates the interquartile range (IQR) between the 25th (Q1) and 75th (Q3) percentiles, and the whiskers extend to the minimum and maximum values within 1.5 times the IQR. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001; ****p < 0.0001 [unpaired two-tailed Student’s t-test in (a, c, f, h), and two-tailed Wilcoxon rank sum test in (g)].