Autoantibodies and Pregnancy Loss

Two articles in this issue of the Journal 1,2 focus on autoantibodies as a cause of pregnancy loss. Rand and coworkers describe a mechanism by which antiphospholipid antibodies could cause placental thrombosis and infarction. They found that antiphospholipid antibodies lower levels of annexin V, a surface anticoagulant present in cultured vascular and trophoblast cells that has a high affinity for anionic phospholipids; by this mechanism, the time to fibrin formation is reduced when plasma is incubated with cells previously incubated with antiphospholipid antibody.1 Laskin and coworkers report the results of a randomized trial of the efficacy of prednisone treatment with . . .