GReD laboratory, CNRS, UMR 6293 - INSERM U1103 - Clermont Auvergne University, Clermont-Ferrand, France.
Andrology. 2019 Sep;7(5):712-718. doi: 10.1111/andr.12637. Epub 2019 May 20.
One third of infertility cases in couples worldwide has an exclusive male origin and immune disorders, essentially due to repetitive infections, are emerging an cause of male infertility. As the place of sperm maturation, epididymis must be preserved from excessive immune responses that may arise following infections of the male genital tract. At the same time, epididymis must set and maintain a tolerogenic environment in order not to destroy sperm cells that enter the tissue at puberty, long after the immune system has been taught to recognize self pathogens. The immune cells that populate the epididymis have raised growing interest over the last thirty years but they may be not sufficient to understand the immune balance existing in this organ, between immune response to pathogens and tolerance to spermatozoa. Indeed, immune cells are the most motile cells in the organism and need blood and lymphatic vessels to traffic between lymphoid organs and sites of infection to induce efficient responses.
To review the literature on the blood and lymphatic vessels, and on the immune cells present at steady state in the rodent epididymis (rat and mouse).
PubMed database was searched for studies reporting on the spatial organization of the rodent epididymal vasculature and immune cell types at steady state. This search was combined with recent findings from our team.
At steady state, the rodent epididymis presents with dense blood and lymphatic networks, and a large panel of immune cells distributed across the interstitum and epithelium along the organ.
The immune system of the rodent epididymis is highly organized. Exploring its functions, especially in an infectious context, is the essential coming step before any transposition to human.
全球三分之一的夫妇不孕病例具有独特的男性病因，而免疫紊乱主要是由于反复感染，正在成为男性不育的原因。作为精子成熟的场所，附睾必须免受男性生殖道感染后可能发生的过度免疫反应的影响。与此同时，附睾必须建立并维持一个耐受环境，以免破坏进入组织的精子细胞，因为这些精子细胞是在青春期进入组织的，此时免疫系统已经学会识别自身病原体。在过去的三十年中，存在于附睾中的免疫细胞引起了越来越多的关注，但它们可能不足以理解该器官中存在的免疫平衡，即对病原体的免疫反应和对精子的耐受之间的平衡。事实上，免疫细胞是生物体中最具运动能力的细胞，它们需要血液和淋巴管来在淋巴器官和感染部位之间迁移，以诱导有效的反应。
综述文献中关于啮齿动物附睾（大鼠和小鼠）中稳态下的血液和淋巴管以及免疫细胞的研究。
在 PubMed 数据库中搜索关于啮齿动物附睾脉管系统和稳态下免疫细胞类型的空间组织的研究报告。该搜索与我们团队的最新发现相结合。
在稳态下，啮齿动物附睾具有密集的血液和淋巴管网络，以及大量分布在间质和沿器官上皮的免疫细胞。
啮齿动物附睾的免疫系统高度组织化。探索其功能，特别是在感染背景下，是任何向人类转移之前的必要步骤。
