[The HLA antigen system in married couples with recurrent spontaneous abortions]

Investigations of factors responsible for the disturbance of fetomaternal tolerance during pathological pregnancies and causes of recurrent spontaneous abortions are pointing that HLA antigens play a key role in their development. Rejection of semiallogeneic allograft in this pregnancy disorder is a consequence of interaction between genetic and immunologic phenomena.

This article reports results of an investigation of human lymphocyte antigens in 130 couples with recurrent spontaneous abortions and in control group of 57 healthy couples. In both investigated groups the first class of human lymphocyte antigens was detected using microlymphocytotoxicity test by Terasaki. The phenotypic frequencies in the group with recurrent spontaneous abortions were compared with the corresponding results in the control group. We investigated the relative risk for development of this disorder and statistically significant difference of human lympocyte antigen frequencies between both investigated groups.

The results of investigation showed that in the group of couples with recurrent spontaneous abortions the relative risk is hihger than 1 for the following human lymphocyte antigens: A2 = (1.53), A9 = (1.149), A10 = (1.07), A29 = (1.70), B18 = (2.24), B40 = (3.31). A significant difference in human lymphocyte antigen frequencies was established for HLA A2, HLA B18 and HLA B40, in comparison with the results of control group. Couples with recurrent spontaneous abortions had a statistically significantly higher rate of identical human lymphocyte antigens among spouses in comparison with the control group, at the level of significance p < 0.05 = 6.32.

The results of this investigation showed that human lymphocyte antigens play an etiopathogenic role in development of recurrent spontaneous abortions and that some of these antigens are increasing susceptibility to pregnancy disorders.