Prevention of Rh isoimmunization. Progress report of the clinical trial in mothers

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Many workers have shown conclusively that passive antibody is capable of specific immunosuppression of the active immunity that follows injection of an antigen. 1-18 It is also clear from experimental results in mice that specific IgG antibody is from 100 to 200 times more immunosuppressive than specific IgM antibody. 18 No attempts had been made to apply this very real immunological phenomenon as a means of immunosuppression for a practical purpose until in 1960 three of the authors (V.J.F., J.G.G., and W.P.) began a program to explore the possibilities of using passive antibody to prevent Rh-negative mothers from becoming immunized by Rh-positive fetuses. 19-29 Our specific hope that the method might work for Rh was supported by the implications of Levine's observations 30 and by actual experimental data of Stern et al, 31 that circulating anti-A and anti-B antibodies actually do prevent Rh-negative mothers from being sensitized to the Rh