[Immunologic abortion and its treatment by immunotherapy]

Abstract

Recurrent spontaneous abortions in most cases, can be explained by classical abnormalities; but for some cases without etiology and consequently without appropriate therapy until a few years ago, there is hope a successful treatment, thanks to recent advances. Contrary to what was suspected in the past, during pregnancy, the mother is immunologically competent against the paternal antigens of the fetus; this competence is necessary for her to respond to the trophoblast paternal antigen stimulations and develop her immune tolerance. If, because of insufficient stimulation, the woman does not succeed in producing this tolerance, it is now possible to help her by vaccination with paternal lymphocytes, before she becomes pregnant. Our results confirm these data: Again, we observe a greater frequency of HLA antigen sharing in couples with recurrent spontaneous abortions (RSAs), especially at the DR locus, Women with three or more RSAs, produce fewer antibodies against their husbands HLA antigens than regular normal fertile women (none out of the 50 cases studied), Anti-paternal antibodies the specificity of which cannot be determined at the moment, are shown by means of the microlymphocytotoxicity test at 37 degrees C carried out on the paternal B lymphocytes. They appear with the cure of the abortive illness after treatment by paternal lymphocyte injections. In the control women who did not receive any immunotherapy, those who developed anti-paternal antibodies spontaneously had a new normal pregnancy; 57.2 of those who did not produce any anti-paternal antibodies aborted once more.