Fig. 6: Consequences of CD4⁺ regulatory T (Treg) cell modulation on pregnancy outcome.

Fetal outcome following Diphtheria toxin (DT)-induced depletion of CD4⁺ Treg cells was determined by (a) expression of Sox2 (2^nd: n = 6, 2^nd + DT: n = 6, p = 0.0052) and Nanog (2^nd: n = 6, 2^nd + DT: n = 5, p = 0.0434) on gestation day (gd) 7.5 as well as (b) abortion rate (2^nd: n = 5, 2^nd + DT: n = 7) and fetal weight (2^nd: n = 55, 2^nd + DT: n = 44, p = 0.0115) on gd 15.5, placental histomorphology data are shown in Supplementary Fig. 6. Abortion rate and fetal weight were further assessed on gd 15.5 (c) in response to adoptively transferred naïve CD4⁺ (n)Treg cells and memory CD4⁺ (m)Treg cells harvested from virgin and parous mice, respectively, into first pregnancy mice mated to OVA-Balb/c males on the day of plug (1^st: n = 7 (59 fetuses), 1^st+nTregs: n = 4 (27 fetuses), 1^st+mTregs: n = 4 (37 fetuses)), d in response to change in paternity by mating with a different mouse strain (DBA/J instead of Balb/c) for the second pregnancy (DF = different father, (2^nd: n = 7 (52 fetuses), 2^nd + DF: n = 6 (48 fetuses); 2^nd vs 2^nd + DF: p = 0.0122) and (e) in response to a prenatal stress challenge on gd 10.5, 12.5 and 14.5 (1^st: n = 8 (68 fetuses), 1^st+stress: n = 7 (61 fetuses), 2^nd: n = 4 (41 fetuses), 2^nd+stress: n = 6 (55 fetuses); 1^st vs 1^st+stress: p = 0.0152, 1^st+stress vs 2^nd+stress: p = 0.0085). Placental histomorphology data after prenatal stress challenge are shown in Supplementary Fig. 6. Please revert to Fig. 5 for more detailed descriptions of the experimental setups. Data are presented as violin plots with individual point, median and quartiles, and the statistical significance between groups was calculated using student’s t-test when comparing two groups or One-way-ANOVA when comparing three or more groups (* p < 0.05). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.