Declined Natural Killer Cells Emerging in Women with Unexplained Recurrent Spontaneous Abortion and Further Reducing after Medical Therapy.

BACKGROUND

As focus grows on reproduction, the issue of Recurrent Spontaneous Abortion (RSA), especially for unexplained reasons (URSA), is grabbing more and more attention in gynecological immunology. We investigated the changes of peripheral lymphocyte subsets focusing on whether they had some relationship with development of URSA.

METHODS

The percentage and absolute count of lymphocyte subsets (T cells, Th cells, Ts cells, B cells, NK cells) were simultaneously evaluated by flow cytometry in URSA patients (n = 48) and healthy controls (HC, n = 22).

RESULTS

Significantly lower percentage and absolute counts of NKT cells and NK cells were observed in URSA compared to the HC. After medical therapy, an obviously increase was shown in the percentage of both T cells and B cells, whereas it presented a reduction in the percentage of NK cells.

CONCLUSIONS

The flow cytometry test in T, B, NK cells is a method available to identify URSA patients from healthy women and to provide reference guides for clinical therapy.