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Immune Cell Discovery Offers New Clues to Infertility Care

Womens Journal Staff 2 on September 9, 2026

Immune cell discovery is sharpening researchers’ understanding of how the uterus manages inflammation, tissue repair and embryo implantation. Published Sept. 8, 2026, in Nature Immunology, the study found that monocytes change in number and function across the reproductive cycle, offering new clues about uterine scarring and some fertility problems.

Key Takeaways

  • The Nature Immunology study found that uterine monocytes shift across the reproductive cycle and can develop into macrophages with inflammatory or tissue-repair functions.
  • In human endometrial samples, monocyte numbers peaked before the usual implantation window.
  • Women with Asherman’s syndrome showed persistently elevated inflammatory monocytes rather than the cyclical pattern observed in healthy tissue.
  • The research used human tissue samples and mouse models. It did not test a new infertility treatment in patients.
  • Researchers identified immune pathways for further study, but current fertility care remains unchanged.

Immune Cell Discovery Maps a Monthly Shift in the Uterus

The immune cell discovery centers on monocytes, cells already known to circulate in the blood and respond to infection and tissue injury. The research does not identify a new immune-cell type. Instead, it describes a more detailed role for monocytes inside the uterus and shows how their activity changes with reproductive timing.

Researchers from the University of Manchester and collaborating institutions analyzed human endometrial samples and tracked immune cells in mouse models. They found that monocytes entered uterine tissue and could develop into two macrophage populations. One showed more inflammatory features, while the other was associated with repair and tissue remodeling.

In human samples, monocyte numbers were highest in the early secretory phase, before the typical implantation window. The timing is notable because embryo implantation occurs within a carefully regulated uterine environment in which inflammatory and tissue-remodeling processes must be coordinated.

The study also identified interactions between monocytes, epithelial cells and fibroblasts. Those structural cells are involved in maintaining and rebuilding the endometrium, the uterine lining that repeatedly changes across the menstrual cycle.

Dr. Lizzie Mann, senior author of the study at the University of Manchester, said monocytes “are not simply bystanders but essential for maintaining a healthy womb.” Researchers reported that disrupted monocyte behavior was associated with abnormal tissue repair and scarring in their experimental work.

The findings add another biological pathway to the broader study of infertility, which can involve ovarian, tubal, hormonal, uterine, genetic and male-factor causes. Fertility problems can also involve ovulatory conditions such as those discussed in PCOS and fertility care, reinforcing why infertility cannot be traced to a single mechanism.

Asherman’s Syndrome Reveals a Disrupted Immune Pattern

The study’s clearest disease comparison involved Asherman’s syndrome, a condition in which scar tissue or adhesions form inside the uterus. The condition can alter menstrual flow, contribute to infertility and create complications for some pregnancies.

Researchers found unusually high levels of inflammatory monocytes and related macrophages in endometrial samples from women with Asherman’s syndrome. Unlike the rise-and-fall pattern observed across healthy menstrual cycles, those immune-cell levels remained elevated across cycle stages.

The inflammatory cells also clustered around glandular epithelial structures in the uterine lining. According to the Nature Immunology study, some abnormal immune features remained detectable after surgical removal of fibrotic tissue, even when aspects of tissue structure improved.

The finding does not establish that monocytes alone cause Asherman’s syndrome or recurrent uterine scarring. Instead, the researchers describe immune dysregulation as one possible component of a larger process involving epithelial cells, fibroblasts, collagen accumulation and inflammatory signaling.

Mouse experiments provided additional mechanistic evidence. Animals in which normal monocyte recruitment was disrupted developed changes in uterine macrophage populations, excess collagen and reproductive abnormalities. Animal findings cannot establish the same effect in humans, but they allowed researchers to study pathways that would be difficult to manipulate directly in patients.

For women undergoing assisted reproductive care, the underlying cause of infertility can substantially change the diagnostic and treatment process. The complexity of that experience is also reflected in accounts of the IVF patient experience, where treatment can involve repeated procedures, medication schedules and ongoing clinical assessment.

Infertility Care Remains a Future Application

The study raises the possibility that future research could examine treatments aimed at monocyte recruitment, inflammatory signaling or the biological signals that direct monocytes toward different macrophage states. Those possibilities remain experimental.

Researchers did not evaluate a drug, immune therapy, diagnostic test or fertility procedure in women. The study also did not demonstrate that changing monocyte levels improves implantation, pregnancy rates or live births.

That distinction matters because infertility covers many different medical conditions and contributing factors. The World Health Organization estimates that about one in six people of reproductive age worldwide experience infertility during their lifetime.

In the United States, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development defines infertility clinically as being unable to achieve pregnancy after one year of regular unprotected intercourse, or after six months when the woman is older than 35. NICHD also notes that a case can involve one cause, several causes or no identifiable cause.

For Asherman’s syndrome, current care remains focused on restoring the uterine cavity. Hysteroscopy is widely used to diagnose the condition and surgically remove intrauterine adhesions. Researchers have studied several methods intended to reduce the return of scar tissue, but evidence has not established one universally superior prevention strategy.

The immune cell discovery therefore changes the research picture more than the treatment plan. By mapping how monocytes move, change and interact with uterine tissue, the study gives researchers a more detailed framework for examining how inflammation, tissue repair, fibrosis and implantation intersect in reproductive health.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did researchers discover about monocytes in the uterus?

Researchers found that uterine monocytes change across the reproductive cycle and can develop into macrophages with inflammatory or tissue-repair characteristics. The results suggest that these cells participate in maintaining and remodeling uterine tissue.

Does the immune cell discovery provide a new infertility treatment?

No. The immune cell discovery identifies biological pathways that researchers may study further, but the published research did not test a new treatment in women or demonstrate improved pregnancy outcomes.

How are monocytes connected to embryo implantation?

Human endometrial samples showed that monocyte numbers peaked before the typical implantation window. Researchers said the timing is consistent with a role in the controlled inflammatory and tissue-remodeling environment surrounding implantation.

What did the study find in women with Asherman’s syndrome?

Women with Asherman’s syndrome had higher levels of inflammatory monocytes and related macrophages, with less of the normal cyclical variation seen in healthy uterine tissue. Researchers identified the pattern as a potential area for further investigation into uterine fibrosis.

Does this research change current infertility care?

No immediate change to clinical care follows from the study. Infertility treatment still depends on the underlying cause, while Asherman’s syndrome is generally managed through hysteroscopic treatment of intrauterine adhesions.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Readers should consult a qualified healthcare professional regarding fertility concerns, symptoms, testing, or treatment options.

The EVOKE Approach to Midlife Reinvention: Less Becoming, More Remembering

Women's Journal Staff on September 9, 2026

By: Kate Sarmiento

Somewhere in the last few months, you’ve probably said a sentence like this out loud: “I’ve just never been good at that,” or “I’m not really the creative type,” or “That ship has sailed for me.” It came out easily, almost automatically, the way you might mention your coffee order. You didn’t pause after saying it. You didn’t ask where it came from.

That’s exactly the problem, according to EVOKE. Anna Rósa Parker founded the methodology to work with stories like these, combining storytelling with neuroscience and heart intelligence. Those offhand lines aren’t necessarily facts about who you are. They’re stories. And sometimes the first step is simply becoming curious about where those stories came from and whether they’re authentically yours.

Most people don’t think of themselves as having a running narrative. They think of themselves as simply being a certain way. Responsible. Not artistic. Bad with money. Someone who missed her window. But say any of those sentences enough times, in enough rooms, to enough people, and something strange happens. The sentence stops sounding like an opinion and starts sounding like a diagnosis. It calcifies. It becomes the frame you organize decades of decisions around, without ever consciously choosing it.

Where These Stories Actually Come From

Nobody sits down one day and decides to write their own limiting narrative. These stories tend to arrive sideways, borrowed from somewhere else and adopted so early that they feel native.

A lot of it starts in childhood roles that got assigned before you were old enough to question them. The responsible older sibling. The quiet one. The one who wasn’t “the smart one,” so she found something else to be instead. Those roles were useful once, maybe even necessary for surviving a particular household. The trouble is nobody sends a memo when the role stops being required, so you keep playing it well into your forties and fifties, wondering why it feels so heavy.

Other stories come from a single failure that got treated like a verdict rather than an event. A rejected manuscript in your twenties can turn into “I’m not a writer” for the next thirty years, even though one rejection was never actually proof of anything except that one editor said no once.

And then there’s the cultural messaging, which is its own architect, especially for women moving through midlife. There’s a particular script handed to women somewhere around perimenopause or the empty nest stage, one that suggests relevance has an expiration date and reinvention past a certain age is either impossible or slightly embarrassing to attempt. Nobody says this directly. It shows up in what gets left unsaid, in whose stories get told in movies and boardrooms, in the subtle assumption that a woman past fifty starting something new needs an explanation while a man doing the same thing needs a headline.

Researchers who study identity have a name for this kind of self-narrative: narrative identity, the idea that people build meaning by weaving their past, present, and future into one ongoing personal story, one that gets revised, or left unrevised, based on what they keep repeating to themselves (Source: Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 2019). Identity isn’t discovered once and locked in. It’s authored continuously, whether or not the author is paying attention.

How the Story Ends Up Running the Whole Show

Here’s where this stops being a nice philosophical idea and starts actually shaping everyday decisions.

Maybe it looks like staying in a job that stopped fitting three years ago because, somewhere along the way, the story became “I’m not someone who starts over.” Maybe it’s skipping the pottery class, the screenplay, the small business idea mentioned at four different dinner parties, because the question of “creative type” got settled back in eighth grade art class and nobody ever reopened it. Maybe it’s going quiet in a relationship, deferring a decision that actually matters, softening an opinion before it even leaves the mouth, because somewhere the story became “I’m the accommodating one,” and accommodating people don’t take up much space.

None of this looks dramatic from the outside. It looks like a normal life. That’s what makes it so easy to miss. The story isn’t announcing itself. It’s just running in the background, one small deferral at a time, while the person living inside it assumes she’s simply seeing reality clearly.

Some genuinely interesting research shows how much of this operates below conscious awareness. Give someone a chance to reconnect with a core value before they face a setback, and they’re far more likely to read that setback as an isolated event rather than proof of some larger story about who they are, a pattern confirmed across more than a hundred studies on people facing identity threat (Source: Healthcare, 2023). The story isn’t just commentary on life. In a very real, measurable way, it’s steering it.

The Moment You Actually Notice the Sentence

Something shifts the instant you catch the sentence instead of just saying it. “I’ve just never been good at that,” said on autopilot, is one thing. That same sentence, noticed mid-air, examined for a second, asked, “Wait, says who, and based on what,” becomes something else entirely.

EVOKE’s methodology treats this as the real turning point, more than any dramatic overhaul or grand reinvention. Awareness is the first act of authorship. The second you can name the story you’ve been living inside, you’re no longer just a character in it. You’re holding the pen, even if just barely, even if you don’t yet know what to write next.

That noticing doesn’t usually arrive as a lightning bolt. More often it shows up as a small, almost embarrassing pause. Catching yourself mid-sentence at a dinner party. Sitting in a parked car after dropping the youngest off at college, realizing the identity built around being needed just changed shape overnight and nobody handed over a new one. These pauses are easy to rush past. According to EVOKE’s approach, that’s exactly where the real work starts.

Rewriting Isn’t About Becoming Someone New

Here’s the part that tends to be a relief once it lands. Revising the story was never about performing a new personality or manufacturing some more impressive version of yourself from scratch. It’s closer to returning to something that was already true before it got buried under other people’s expectations, old failures, and a script written by someone else.

This distinction matters most for women in the empty-nest or menopausal stage looking to redefine who they are next, because the pressure they often feel isn’t really a pressure to become someone unrecognizable. It’s closer to a persistent pull back toward a version of themselves that existed before the caretaking, the career compromises, the years of putting everyone else’s story ahead of their own. In that sense, rewriting is less invention and more recovery.

This is where EVOKE’s approach differs from a lot of the standard advice floating around. The EVOKE Your Story™ methodology pairs the narrative work with the physiological piece, using heart intelligence practices alongside storytelling, on the idea that change isn’t just a matter of deciding to think differently. The body and the nervous system are part of the story too, and you can’t out-think a narrative your heart hasn’t caught up with yet. Researchers have studied how a calm, steady heart rhythm, the kind that shows up during positive emotional states, relates to attention and emotional regulation more broadly, a reminder that the body isn’t just along for the ride. It plays a part in how people process and respond to the narratives they carry (Source: Global Journal of Health Science, 2018).

So the work becomes less about willpower and more about paying attention to the sentence, to your body’s response to it, to what actually feels true underneath the old script.

The Next Draft Is Already Waiting

Go back to that offhand sentence from the very beginning. “I’ve just never been good at that.” You’ve said it so many times it stopped sounding like an opinion.

What if it was never a fact in the first place? What if it was only ever a draft, written a long time ago, by someone with less information than you have today?

Drafts get revised. That’s the entire point of a draft. Nobody expects the first version of anything to be the final one, except somehow, when it comes to the stories people tell about themselves, the first version often gets treated as permanent.

It doesn’t have to be. Noticing the sentence is where authorship begins. What gets written next is entirely open, and if you’re curious what the process of understanding the stories you’ve been carrying, discovering what’s authentically yours, and becoming more fully your truest self actually looks like, EVOKE’s storytelling-based approach offers one way in, gently, without asking you to become anyone other than who was already there underneath it all.

Curious what that looks like in practice? EVOKE’s website is a good place to start.

The Day Dr. Melissa Balizan Couldn’t Breathe, and the Career It Rebuilt

Women's Journal Staff on September 9, 2026

A pharmacist who spent her life caring for others learned the hardest lesson of all from her own body

She thought she could handle it. The demands of the job were heavy, but she had always been the one who managed, who solved, who kept things moving for everyone else. Then one day Dr. Melissa Balizan found that she could not breathe. Not in a panic, not for a moment, but in a way that would not resolve no matter what she did. Her body had been keeping a record she had not been reading, and it had finally presented the bill.

What followed was not a quick diagnosis or a tidy recovery. It took four years to reach the right physician, four years of being passed along, of questions that did not lead anywhere, of living with a problem that no one could quite name. When the answer finally came, it required surgery. The operation repaired the physical issue. It did not touch the thing underneath it. The stress of her work, she came to understand, had been quietly dismantling her health, and no procedure was going to fix that for her.

There is a particular irony in a healthcare expert spending years unable to get answers from healthcare. Dr. Balizan, a Doctor of Pharmacy with decades of clinical experience, knew the system from the inside. She knew the language, the protocols, the right people to ask. And still she nearly slipped through the cracks. The experience did not make her cynical. It made her focused. If someone with her training could be left struggling to breathe for years, what chance did the average patient have?

That question reshaped the rest of her career. Today, with 26 years in healthcare and more than 52,000 clinical hours behind her, she speaks openly about stress. Not the vague, motivational version of the topic, but the clinical reality of it. What stress actually is. How it moves through the body. What it can look like when it hides behind a packed calendar and a high tolerance for discomfort. She has lived the answer to each of those questions, which is why audiences tend to lean in when she speaks.

Her message carries a directness that only comes from experience. She teaches people, especially women in demanding careers, to give themselves permission to take care of themselves now rather than at some imagined point when things finally slow down. She is wary of the superwoman myth, having nearly been crushed by it herself, and she reframes the goal. The point is not to do everything at full speed indefinitely. The point is to build a life you can actually breathe inside of.

Long before the breathing crisis, the seeds of her philosophy were already there. As a young person drawn to science and math, she wanted to help people but knew she did not want to work with blood, so pharmacy became her path. What she discovered along the way was a profession far broader than she expected, full of possibility for someone willing to color outside the lines. She spent her early career in ambulatory and institutional care, and even then she was the one people turned to when they wanted a better option than the obvious one.

Photo Courtesy: Dr. Melissa Balizan

The health crisis simply accelerated a conviction that was already forming. She had spent years watching patients manage multiple medications while still feeling unwell, leaving appointments more confusing than when they arrived, struggling in silence without clear guidance. Her own experience added a visceral layer to that observation. She knew, now in her own body, what it felt like to be unheard. She decided she would not let the people she served feel that way.

So she expanded. She studied beyond pharmacy into nutrition, mental health, stress management, and integrative approaches, refusing to treat traditional and holistic medicine as opposing camps. She became, in her own words, a bridge between the two. She built a consulting practice, wrote books, took the stage as a speaker, and eventually launched the television show Vital with Dr. Melissa, all in service of a single idea that her crisis had burned into her. People deserve to understand their health, and they deserve to be heard while they do it.

She can breathe freely now. She says it plainly, and it lands as more than a medical fact. It is the through-line of her work, the reason she shows up each day to help others find their own way back to a fuller breath. The woman who once could not get a diagnosis now spends her life making sure other people get their questions answered.

The story she tells is not really about surgery. It is about the cost of ignoring yourself, and the strange gift that sometimes arrives when a body refuses to be ignored any longer. For the people who hear her speak, the takeaway is rarely fear. It is permission. Permission to listen sooner, to ask louder, and to believe that taking care of themselves is not a luxury they have to earn.

Dr. Melissa Balizan shares her work on stress, advocacy, and whole-person health at drmelissabalizan.com. Her recent interviews can be found at Bold Journey and Voyage Denver.

The Dangerous Conversation You Have With Yourself

Women's Journal Staff on September 9, 2026

By: Media at Game Changer Publishing

There are conversations that define careers, strengthen relationships, and change the course of a life.

Then there is another conversation that rarely receives the same attention, even though it may influence every decision we make.

It is the daily conversation we have with ourselves.

Unlike the words we speak to colleagues, family members, or friends, our internal dialogue rarely pauses. It interprets successes, explains setbacks, predicts future outcomes, and gradually influences how we see ourselves and the world around us. Because these thoughts happen automatically, many people never stop to consider how much their own language may be affecting their confidence, resilience, and choices.

For Judy Selby, this conversation deserves far more attention than it usually receives.

Drawing on more than three decades as an award-winning attorney, certified performance coach, and bestselling author, Selby has spent her career helping professionals navigate conversations where words carry significant consequences. While many of those conversations happened across conference tables, courtrooms, and coaching sessions, she believes the most influential conversations always begin within.

The Language We Repeat Becomes the Lens We Use

Most people do not intentionally choose limiting beliefs. Instead, they develop through repeated language.

Phrases such as “I’m terrible at this,” “I always mess things up,” or “That’s just the way I am” can seem harmless in isolation. Repeated over time, however, they begin to sound less like passing thoughts and more like permanent truths.

Researchers in cognitive psychology have proven how internal dialogue influences emotional regulation, decision-making, and performance. Sports psychologists have similarly observed that athletes’ self-talk can affect confidence, focus, and resilience under pressure.

The words people repeat to themselves may not change reality overnight, but they can strongly influence how that reality is interpreted and how confidently it is approached.

Identity Is Built Through Small, Repeated Conversations

One reason self-talk carries such influence is that it gradually shifts from describing an experience to defining an identity.

There is an important difference between saying, “I’m facing a difficult challenge,” and believing, “I’m simply not capable.”

The first describes a moment.

The second begins to define a person.

Selby has observed that even accomplished professionals unknowingly carry these damaging narratives into their work, relationships, and leadership. They may continue achieving externally while privately reinforcing doubts that limit their willingness to take risks, embrace opportunities, or trust their own judgment.

Recognizing those patterns is the first step toward changing them.

Intentional Language Is Different From Positive Thinking

In Never Say It!: The Words That Hold You Back and What to Say Instead, Selby and her co-author Cris Cawley write about how everyday language influences mindset, relationships, and performance. The bestselling book encourages readers to pay closer attention to the words they habitually use, not because every conversation should become relentlessly optimistic, but because language has a way of reinforcing the beliefs people carry about themselves and others.

That distinction is crucial.

Intentional language doesn’t require us to pretend that difficulties do not exist or to replace every challenge with an affirmation. It is more about choosing words that reflect reality without surrendering confidence, responsibility, or hope.

By becoming more aware of the language they repeat, people may begin to notice opportunities for growth that previously felt out of reach simply because of the stories they had been telling themselves.

Renewing the Conversation Within

The importance of internal dialogue has been explored through psychology and performance coaching for decades. It also echoes a principle found in Scripture, which encourages the renewing of the mind as part of personal transformation.

Although these perspectives emerge from different traditions, they point toward a similar idea: the words people consistently embrace, whether spoken aloud or repeated internally, influence how they live, relate to others, and respond to life’s challenges.

For Selby, changing that conversation does not require becoming someone different.

It begins with becoming more intentional about the language already impacting everyday life.

The most important conversation anyone has may never be spoken aloud.

Yet it has the potential to influence every other conversation that follows.

Learn More

Judy Selby is an award-winning attorney, certified performance coach, athlete representative, and bestselling author of Never Say It!: The Words That Hold You Back and What to Say Instead. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience helping professionals navigate high-stakes conversations, leadership challenges, and personal growth, she explores how intentional language shapes mindset, relationships, and performance.

Website: https://selbystrategies.com