American Society for the Immunology of Reproduction Abstracts of the Fourth Annual International Symposium Park City, Utah, June 8–11, 1983

Abstract

A 26-year-old Kuwai t i woman in good health was referred to the John Hopkins Hospital Division of Reproductive Endocrinology subsequent to her thirteenth spontaneous abort ion. The abort ions occurred at ten weeks I ges tat ion; a D and C was done follow ing each abortion. Complete and thorough endocrino logic, virologic, and cytogenetic evaluations were entirely normal. Immunologic evaluation revealed anti-P, as well as anti-IILA-B8 and anti-DR3, in the woman's serum. Her erythrocytes typed PIP k. Anti-P is present in the serum of all known pk individuals. This woman's titers were 1 :32 for IgM and 1:4 for IgG. Two circumstances implicate anti-P rather than the HLA antibodies as the cause of her abortions: l) anti-Tja (anti-PPlpk) has been implicated in early abortions of Tj8 negative women; 2) the anti-P antibody was undoubtedly present prior to her first pregnancy, whert:!as the anti-HLA ant i bodies resu 1t from pregnancy immunizat ions. Parenthetically, our patient shared no HLA haplotype with her husband; however, they shared one antigen, HLA-Bw52. Subsequent to these studies, the patient I s fourteenth abortion occurred at eight weeks' gestation, and, for the first time, fetal material was available for examination Cytogenetics revealed a normal female karyotype. Immunofluorescence, immunope r ox i d ase , and elect ron mi croscopic stud i e s are in progress.