Abstract
While the pathological lesions of pre-eclampsia, in particular the deposition of fibrin products in the kidney and other organs, may suggest an immunological basis for the condition, attempts to establish such an etiology have been unsuccessful. However, an immune etiology may be inferred from immunogenetic observations that women have a reduced tendency to develop the condition with increasing consanguinity to their husbands, and from a case report of a severe pre-eclampsia in a second pregnancy to a different consort in a patient whose first pregnancy had been normal.
Cell-mediated immunity (CMI) as measured by in vitro lymphocyte transformation with phytohemagglutinin (PHA) is known to be depressed in pregnancy. It is suggested that this may be due to serum factor, recently characterized as α-2 macroglobulin. The authors have assessed PHA-induced lymphocytic activity in normal pregnant and pre-eclamptic patients repeatedly throughout the latter part of pregnancy.