STUDY QUESTION What role do female sex hormones play in the antisperm immune response? SUMMARY ANSWER We found that sperm induce a Th17 immune response and that estradiol down-regulates the antisperm Th17 response by dendritic cells. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY Estradiol down-regulates the immune response to several pathogens and impairs the triggering of dendritic cell maturation by microbial pr...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the predictive capacity of immunoglobulin G ASA (direct MAR test) for spontaneous ongoing pregnancy in subfertile couples. DESIGN Prospective cohort study. SETTING Nine fertility centers in The Netherlands. PATIENT(S) Consecutive ovulatory subfertile couples. INTERVENTION(S) A basic fertility workup, including a mixed agglutination reaction test for IgG (MAR tes...

Previous studies of the associations of measures of occupational lead exposure with measures of semen quality and infertility among male workers have produced conflicting results. The current study was undertaken to examine these associations among a population of workers with a broad range of measures of current and historical lead exposure. Ninety-seven lead-exposed workers from a South Afric...

background: mycobacterium tuberculosis is a major cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. infection with this bacterium is known to induce the development of autoantibodies of which a few are also known to be diagnostic markers for some other diseases. antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (anca's) are among those autoantibodies used in clinical setting for diagnosing systemic vasculit...

patients with malignancy are at higher risk of thrombotic complications due to the hypercoagulability state. our objective in this study was to assess the serum concentrations of homocysteine, anti phospholipid antibodies, and anti cardiolipin in patients with benign and malignant breast tumors and study the effect of chemotherapy on the serum levels of these markers. a case control study was c...