Review Article The Role of PPARs in Placental Immunology: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Copyright © 2013 Stefan Hutter et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Pregnancy is a state of immunotolerance, and pregnancy outcome is strongly linked to the correct activation and balancing of the maternal immune system. Besides abortion as possible result of improper early pregnancy development, other pregnancy associated conditions like preeclampsia (PE), intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR), preterm labour, or gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) are linked to immunologic overactivation and dysregulation. Both the innate and the adaptive immune system, and therefore B and T lymphocytes, natural killer cells (NK), macrophages and dendritic cells (DCs) are all involved in trophoblast invasion, pregnancymaintenance, and development of pregnancy disorders. Peroxisome proliferator activated receptors (PPARs) are nuclear transcription factors with three known isotypes: PPA