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Patricia M. McShane, MD; Isaac Schiff, MD; David E. Trentham, MD
Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Hospital Boston

JAMA. 1986;255(1):36.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply.—

We appreciate the interest of Dr Haas in our work and agree that it does not identify the nature of the epitope that was responsible for inducing the cellular response in our infertile patients. However, we continue to conclude that this determinant was of spermatic origin since the presence of contaminating nonsperm cells should have been identified by our search for Ia-positive material in our test antigen preparation and led to alloreactive responses in our in vitro assays. Ia-driven responses probably account for the data obtained by Rodriguez-Cordoba and Arnaiz-Villena, and the absence of such findings increases the likelihood that the abnormal reactivity in our study was elicited by spermatozoa.

Identification of the spermatic antigens should be given a high priority in order to afford the potential of antigen-specific immunotherapy for these women in the future. . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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