Hellobee Boards

Amen! My 10mo old is only here because I found doctors that believe in reproductive immunology and autoimmune causes for mc!

If you don't mind me asking, were you on hormonal contraceptives when you guys met? I have read that this is more common in couples where the woman was talking birth control... Something about pheromones.

Immunology is so fascinating! Chemicals suck, I hope this helps some families grow.

@Mrs. Jacks: It's such a wide open, brand new field - of course most practitioners aren't going to be highly knowledgeable about it. How could they be? But it is awfully disappointing to hear about REs actively discouraging their patients from seeking out further information. Same old same old, people want to protect the knowledge and processes and revenue streams they already have.

That article you posted is fascinating. Long story short, we don't understand the reason behind many (most?) miscarriages, and this is likely just another piece of that information puzzle. How interesting that it fits into your personal experience so well, too.

@Mrs. Jacks: That was about two years ago when we went through that process. We now have a second child.

I was just literally allergic to implantation. We fired our re because he minimized that so much. I know what happened to me. I refused to go to an re that just wanted my money and wouldn't listen to me. So it took a while to move forward. Nearly a year of me searching for answers because I wasn't going to sink the money into it if there wasn't a chance of success.

Wow this is so fascinating and I hope it can be addressed and potentially help some women dealing with recurrent loss. I am so sorry to you for your losses as well.

How would IVIG help? HLA DQ is not expressed on fetal cells. Is there a method proposed?

@Mrs. Jacks: I did look at the paper but the use of IVIg was talked about in reference to anti phospholipid antibodies not HLA DQ.

This paper I thought gave a fair overview of the divide in what research has found with HLA similarities. There seems to be as many studies that found no connection.
http://m.humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/4/765.long?view=long&pmid=21325036

I can see how IVIg could potentially help in some cases of infertility. I just can't think of a way that the father being similar to the mother would cause an immune response especially since mhc II isn't expressed on fetal cells. You can get responses if there's cell death, but there would be a bigger problem then. Potentially the protein could be presented on mhc I but fetal mhc I expression is strange with most not expressed, the fetal ones seem to be mainly there to prevent nk destruction since they'd go after bare cells lacking mhc I.

The reason I linked to the paper is it touches on this in the intro and links to some papers that further discuss but it is all fairly speculative, interesting but speculative. The second half of the discussion also has some good discussion and links. And i found it interesting that she brought up geographic differences in findings, which I take to mean this gene is linked to something else that's the potential cause.
Tolerance to the fetus is really interesting and so much isn't known. You kept me up last night reading for a bit. Only big nerds read research papers after wine night to fall asleep. Hope your overnight went well.

@Mrs. Jacks: This is so interesting. I've had 2 CPs, one miscarriage, and one baby. Not enough to be too worried but enough to have my radar up for things like this.

Another interesting thing my OB mentioned briefly to me was a study a few years ago that found some women have "super fertility" and their bodies basically implant embryos really easily, even if they're not viable. Embryos that most women's bodies would have just rejected. So the "super fertile" women end up with more CPs and miscarriages. I don't know the status of that study but the idea has stuck with me.

@Mrs. Jacks: did you have any immune responses? I had the two clearly related reactions. With the stuck baby I took Benadryl during the tww and I think that helped. There is a method that uses Benadryl, I think a PPi inhibitor and aspirin.

@Mrs. Jacks: I always worry about this issue. I can't get pregnant on my own, and have done 2 fresh rounds of IVF and one FET. I have now had two blighted ovums. The first one I needed a D&C for, and the 2nd I miscarried naturally. My RE also shrugs off the immunology testing but did test me for Lupus, and my levels of Cardiolipin IgG and Cardiolipin IgM. She has the same attitude that the RE's that @raintreebe spoke to.

I am always on steroids for a week before/during my transfers, and then go off of them, so sometimes I wonder if that makes things start to go wrong.

I know that blighted ovums are most often caused by chromosomal abnormalities, but I still get nervous that it's actually something else with me. DH and I both had chromosomal panels run and they were fine.