Reproductive immunology
Reproductive immunology studies maternal-fetal immune tolerance and the situations in which it is implicated in repeated pregnancy failure: recurrent early pregnancy loss, implantation failure, inflammatory placental disease.
What it is
Pregnancy requires an organism to accept, over months, a partly foreign tissue. When pregnancies fail repeatedly with no anatomical, hormonal or chromosomal cause found, the immune hypothesis is one of those explored, though not, to date, the only or the best established one. The field is young and disputed on several points: the tests offered, their interpretation and the treatments derived from them are not the object of international consensus.
His work on this subject
Arsène Mekinian has directed the university diploma in reproductive immunology at Sorbonne Université since 2024. He coordinates the FALCO national registry on unexplained recurrent pregnancy loss and implantation failure, a national multidisciplinary board on infertility, and two clinical trials: FaCIL-2 (low-dose interleukin-2) and CERTIFY (certolizumab).
Where care is organised
Department of Internal Medicine and Clinical Immunology, Saint-Antoine Hospital (AP-HP), with the obstetrics and reproductive medicine teams of the hospital group.
What is not known
What proportion of repeated failures genuinely involves an immune mechanism is not established. No immunological test currently allows, on its own, a treatment decision. Ongoing trials are designed to answer these questions.
References
- FALCO registry — Human Reproduction, 2024;39(9):1934-1941. DOI 10.1093/humrep/deae146cité 11 fois
- FaCIL-2 trial — medRxiv preprint, 2025. preprint: not yet peer-reviewed