Estrogen withdrawal alters antibody sugars

This proposed hypothesis asks whether falling estrogen after menopause can make existing antibodies damage several organs more readily. It focuses on immunoglobulin G (IgG), an antibody that recognizes targets. Estrogen withdrawal may alter sugar groups on IgG’s Fc region, its immune-activating tail. Recognition could stay constant while the altered tail deposits more complement, an immune protein system, and drives tissue injury. The test would edit Fc sugars in one purified IgG sample and compare it with sham editing. Less complement deposition and injury, with IgG amount and target recognition unchanged, would support the proposed mechanism.