Anti-fetal immune response mechanisms may be involved in the pathogenesis of placental abruption

Placental abruption is an unpredictable severe complication in pregnancy. In order to investigate the possibility that the activation of the fetal nonadaptive immune system may be involved in the pathogenesis of this disease, IL-6 release from cord blood monocytes was examined by intracellular cytokine staining and flow cytometric analysis. Our results demonstrate that preterm placental abruption (n = 15) in contrast to uncontrollable preterm labor (n = 33) is associated with significantly (P < 0.001) increased release of IL-6 from the fetal monocytes. The same holds true for rhesus disease (n = 9, P < 0.001) that is characterized by a maternal production of antibodies against the rhesus-D …