Placental Thrombosis in Experimental Anticardiolipin Antibodies‐Mediated Intrauterine Fetal Death

ProblemAnticardiolipin (aCL) antibodies are associated with stillbirths, recurrent miscarriages and recurrent in vitro fertilization implantation failure in women. Previous animal studies have demonstrated that these antibodies can cause early fetal demise and implantation failure in mice, but most previous studies have not allowed the immunized mice to proceed to the full term of gestation.Method of studyMice were immunized with either cardiolipin alone or cardiolipin in combination with β2‐glycoprotein I (β2GPI) and have studied the effects of these antibodies on pregnancies which were allowed to progress to term.ResultsImmunization with cardiolipin alone induced significant levels of anticardiolipin antibodies in mice, but immunization with a combination of cardiolipin and β2GPI produced even higher levels of antibodies. Mice with elevated levels of anticardiolipin antibodies had poor pregnancy outcomes. This study confirms previous results that anticardiolipin antibodies cause early pregnancy losses and also demonstrates that these antibodies cause stillbirth‐like late fetal demise. This study further demonstrated that very high levels of anticardiolipin antibodies cause intrauterine death by facilitating the thrombotic episode in placenta.ConclusionsThe present study concludes that the possible mechanism involves in stillbirth of aCL is possibly because of the thrombotic events of placenta.