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Alan E. Beer, MD

JAMA. 1989;262(22):3184.

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

At the beginning of this century, it was suggested that the etiology of preeclampsia/eclampsia had an immunologic component. The hypothesis advanced was that preeclampsia/ eclampsia reflected either a partial breakdown of the mechanisms responsible for the normal exemption of the fetoplacental unit from rejection as an allograft or an immunologic response directed against tissue- or organ-specific antigens associated with the placenta.¹ Since then, increasingly sophisticated investigations that have paralleled new developments in immunobiology have furthered our understanding of the immunobiology of the maternal-fetal relationship and thereby this condition.

There are cogent immunologic explanations for the basic observations regarding preeclampsia/eclampsia.² The immunologic factors contributing to the pathogenesis of preeclampsia/eclampsia suggest that this disorder is most likely to arise in a woman who (1) becomes pregnant early in her coital experience and is confronted initially with a large, healthy placenta whose size and invasive propensity of its trophoblast cells in . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
University of Health Sciences/ The Chicago Medical School North Chicago, Ill

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