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Contraception Research for Today and the Nineties pp 171–180Cite as

Cell-Mediated Immune Mechanisms in Recurrent Spontaneous Abortion

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Part of the book series: Progress in Vaccinology ((VACCINOLOGY,volume 1))

Abstract

Approximately 20% of all conceptions end in detectable spontaneous abortion. Recurrent abortion is a common and important clinical problem affecting approximately 1 in 300pregnancies (14). The risks for recurrent abortion have been calculated by Warburton and Frazier (54) to be 24% after one abortion, 26% after two abortions, and 32% after three consecutive pregnancy losses before 20 weeks gestation. Many instances of recurrent spontaneous abortion have identifiable etiologies such as chromosomal (5), mullerian (38), endocrinological (26,55), and infectious (12,29) abnormalities. However, recurrent abortion was unexplained in as many as 40% of couples studied (52). An immunologic etiology is suspected in women with subclinical autoimmune disease such as systemic lupus erythematosus, who have an increased incidence of otherwise unexplained recurrent abortion (11,13,15,39). The transplacental passage of maternal immunoglobulins that are cytotoxic to trophoblastic or fetal tissue is presumed to be a pathologic mechanism for abortion in such cases (32). Recurrent abortion is also associated with immunity to allogenic (husband’s) lymphocytes, sperm, and trophoblast antigens (3,25,33). Our current evidence indicates that the mechanisms of immunologic abortion in women may not only be antibody mediated (humoral response) but could also be cellularly mediated (cellular response) due to cytotoxic effects of lymphokines and monokines released by reproductive antigen (sperm and/or trophoblast) or other foreign (i.e., microbial) antigensensitized lymphocytes and macrophages in reproductive tissues.

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Authors
  1. Joseph A. Hill
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  2. Deborah J. Anderson
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Immunology, JNU Complex, Shahid Jeet Singh Marg, 110 067, New Delhi, India

    G. P. Talwar

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© 1988 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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Hill, J.A., Anderson, D.J. (1988). Cell-Mediated Immune Mechanisms in Recurrent Spontaneous Abortion. In: Talwar, G.P. (eds) Contraception Research for Today and the Nineties. Progress in Vaccinology, vol 1. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3746-4_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3746-4_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-8331-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-3746-4

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