Dr Teodora Georgescu (left in picture) has been awarded an HRC Emerging Researcher First Grant to the value of $250,000. In this project, together with associate investigator Prof Dave Grattan, she aims to find out the processes in the brain which lead to a reduced fever response in pregnant females which have an infection.
The maternal brain undergoes numerous physiological adaptations that ultimately safeguard the healthy development of offspring. To protect the unborn foetus from exposure to elevated maternal body temperatures that are detrimental to its development, the fever response is suppressed in women during pregnancy. So far, the neuronal mechanism behind this vital adaptation is unknown.
Levels of the hormone prolactin are considerably increased during pregnancy, making prolactin-driven pathways a viable candidate for mediating this adaptation. In previous work, Teodora and her colleagues could identify prolactin receptor (Prlr)-expressing neurons present in two key brain regions for modulating the fever response: the raphe pallidus and the ventral medial preoptic area.
In this project, Teodora will measure and manipulate the activity of these cells during an infection, to reveal how hormones act on these neural circuits during pregnancy to attenuate the febrile response.