Abstract
During the past 15 years we have evaluated couples with unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA), couples with normal pregnancies, and women who electively terminate their pregnancies early in gestation and have found major differences in the alloimmune and autoimmune status in women with unexplained RSA (1–3). In studies of over 1500 couples in this latter category we have shown (i) a higher incidence of HLA-DR and HLA-DQ antigen sharing compared to fertile controls (4); (ii) a higher incidence of HLA-DR and -DQ homozygosity in the male partners (5); (iii) a markedly decreased level of maternal alloantibody to paternal T and B lymphocytes compared to fertile control couples (2, 6); (iv) a strikingly higher incidence of antiphospholipid antibodies to phosphatidylserine (PS), phosphatidylinositol (PI), phosphatidylglycerol (PG), and cardiolipin (CL) that increases in incidence and titer with each subsequent pregnancy loss in three distinct populations of women studied (United States, Kuwait, and Colombia) (3, 7); and (v) an 89% incidence of subsequent pregnancy loss following lymphocyte immune therapy in autoimmune women untreated for the autoimmune abnormalities (2).
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References
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Beer, A.E., Kwak, J.Y.H., Gilman-Sachs, A., Beaman, K.D. (1994). New Horizons in the Evaluation and Treatment of Recurrent Pregnancy Loss. In: Hunt, J.S. (eds) Immunobiology of Reproduction. Serono Symposia, USA. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8422-9_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8422-9_20
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