Toxemia of pregnancy is a common complication of gestation, usually occurring in late pregnancy. Whether toxemia represents an exaggeration of changes incident to pregnancy or depends upon some wholly new factor is a moot point. Indeed, the cause of the toxemia of pregnancy, despite decades of intensive research, remains the great enigma of obstetrics and constitutes one of an important unsolved problems in the field of human reproduction. Glomerulonephritis can be induced in various animal species by numerous serums and tissue extracts. Its production by duck immune serum was first described in the rabbit by Masugi(1934). By using a potent standardized nephrotoxic duck serum or its gamma globulin, nephritis has be reproduced in a regular manner by Seegal, et al., (1936). The experiments recorded here show the results of injecting rabbit antidog-placenta serum into both pregnant and non-pregnant dogs as described by Seegal at al., (1955). The course of the resulting nephritis is compared with that following the injection of rabbit antidog-kidney serum. The large size of the animal permitted frequent bleeding and the gestation period allowed for observation of nephritis during pregnancy. The findings support the conclusion that rabbit antidog-placenta serum injected in the dog produced an acute nephritis which usually progressed to a chronic state comparable to that which follows the injection of anti-kidney serum. Pregnancy has not been terminated by this antiserum. Beveans et al.(1955) describe the lesions produced in these pregnant and non-pregnant dogs following injection of either rabbit anti-placenta or rabbit anti-kidney serum. Acute and chronic phases of the nephritis have been studied over a period of 10 months. The intravenous injection of rabbit antidog-placenta or antidog-kidney serum produced immediate evidence of glomerulonephritis in dogs and rabbits. The glomerulonephritis so induced may terminate in death within 8 days, may progress to a chronic form or may heal. Recently, Irino et al.(1967) induced renal 1esions in rats by placental extracts. These changes were observed with the electron microscope and the ranal glomerular alterations in rats with a clinical syndrome resembling toxemia of pregnancy showed the characteristic changes consisting of swelling with decreased density of tile basement membrane, a dense granular deposition within tile along capillary basement membranes, and marked swelling and slight proliferation of glomerular epithelium. The glomerular lesions, designated endothelial glomerulitis are apparently a result of an antigen-antibody reaction and present further evidence that human toxemia of pregnancy has an immune mechanism as a basis for its production. Kim(1969) attempted to establish the pathologic changes induced by sensitizing the rat against homologous placental tissue and to compare them with the lesions of the kidney in human toxemia. He found that renal lesions were closely related to that of human toxemia of pregnancy. The present investigation is aimed to study the lesions in the glomerulus of the pregnant rat kidneys induced by repeated injection of homologous placental tissue as observed with the light, the fluorescent and the electron microscope and adds further evidence for the view that the syndrome, as induced experimentally, constitutes an analog of toxemia of pregnancy as it affects the human.s
Animal ; Antigen-Antibody Reactions ; Autoantibodies/biosynthesis* ; Female ; Kidney Glomerulus/pathology* ; Microscopy ; Microscopy, Electron ; Microscopy, Fluorescence ; Nephritis/pathology* ; Pregnancy ; Pregnancy Toxemias/immunology* ; Rats