Humoral immune responses in murine pregnancy. IV. Strain dependency and alloantibody specificity.
The relationship between the ability of female inbred mice to produce an anti-paternal humoral immune response to allogeneic multiparity and the genotype of the female and male strains has been investigated. Only three, all H-2b haplotype strains, were 'responder' strains and produced anti-paternal alloantibody which did not exhibit C'-dependent cytotoxicity. 'Non-responder' strains produced no alloantibody in spite of multiple pregnancies with H-2 and non-H-2 incompatible male strains. However, even responder strains did not produce alloantibody with all incompatible male strains. The absence of a response in a responder strain mated with a male strain differing at only the H-2 locus implicated a role for non-H-2 influences. A study of the specificity of pregnancy-induced alloantibody suggested that this represented only a fraction of the total alloantibody population induced by conventional immunization in the same strain combination. It is suggested that in pregnancy only the anti-non-H-2 humoral responses remain similar to those induced by immunization, whereas anti-H-2 humoral responses are either absent or are restricted to a fraction of the total foreign H-2 specificities presented. These observations are discussed in relation to the nature of the immunogenic stimulus in pregnancy and the expression of histocompatibility antigens on the feto-placental unit.
D000818:Animals; D000918:Antibody Specificity; D003602:Cytotoxicity, Immunologic; D005260:Female; D005838:Genotype; D006649:Histocompatibility Antigens / Q000235:genetics*; D007518:Isoantibodies / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000235:genetics; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008807:Mice, Inbred BALB C; D008809:Mice, Inbred C3H; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D008808:Mice, Inbred CBA; D008815:Mice, Inbred Strains / Q000276:immunology*; D011247:Pregnancy; D011270:Pregnancy, Animal
D006649:Histocompatibility Antigens; D007518:Isoantibodies