Autoimmunity in reproductive failure: a study on associated autoantibodies and autoantigens
Infertility, biological inability of a person to contribute to conception, refers also to a couple unable to achieve pregnancy after one year of trying. Infertility touches, for a shorter or longer period, 10-15% of couples and is caused by a variety of different diseases and conditions. Autoimmunity – immune reactions targeted against self biomolecules – is shown to be involved in some certain cases of male as well as female infertility; some types of autoantibodies are in various ways related to reproductive failure. However, many corresponding autoantigens are still not identified. Furthermore, there is a kind of controversial data about the significance of the presence of certain autoantibodies in reproductive failure. This study focused on (i) characterizing common autoantibodies as a circumstantial evidence for an involvement of autoimmunity in female infertility; (ii) clarifying the situation of autoantigenic targets in female hypogonadism associated with premature ovarian failure (POF) and autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 1 (APS-1); (iii) finding out new testicular autoantigens besides the known ones concerning male gonadal failure and infertility. The study revealed that the non-organ-specific common autoantibodies (ANA and SMA types) are significantly more prevalent among female patients with infertility than among women of general population. Although this prevalence might be due to a variety of causes, the incidence strongly supports the argument for autoimmune reactions being involved in some cases of female infertility. Secondly, 3βHSD autoantibodies, reported as POF-associated (with 21% prevalence), appear to be seldom (prevalence 2.4%) in case of these patients. Therefore their significance as a single diagnostic biomarker for POF is modest. Thirdly, a testis-expressed protein TSGA10 reveals as an autoantigen by human testis cDNA library immunoscreening with APS-1 male patients sera. A few (7%) APS-1 male and female patients’ sera contained TSGA10 autoantibodies but without any clinical association with gonadal failure in these patients. These autoantibodies persist in an APS-1 male patient sera during 25 years follow up. However, the significance of TSGA10 autoreactivity in APS-1 remains indistinct.
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