The Alan E. Beer Center for Reproductive Immunology & Genetics helps families grow by researching and treating couples who experience recurrent miscarriages, multiple pregnancy losses or repeated in vitro fertilization failures.

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An Introduction Our Program

by Alan E. Beer, M.D., Director and Founder

Welcome to our web site! I have authored much of the information here and it is based on over 25 years of research in immunology and reproduction studying the embryo and a transplant. My curriculum vitae will attest to my commitment in this area and will provide the solid scientific underpinning for the information given here.

Although I have learned much about infertility and pregnancy losses by studying healthy couples who get pregnant easily and then lose every pregnancy through miscarriage, my research has taught me much more. There are couples who are an unlucky match for each other who produce embryos that are misinterpreted by the immune system as foreign objects or even cancer cells. These embryos are repudiated and each attempt at pregnancy makes the problem worse until the uterus behaves like a "den of lions" and every pregnancy attempt fails. This occurs even when beautiful embryos are produced in the test tubes following in vitro fertilization.

Some of our patients tell us they have heard many of the following statements:

  1. You were unlucky this time, try again.
  2. It is God's will; you can always adopt.
  3. It was meant to be.
  4. The baby was abnormal.
  5. The body knows when a baby needs to be rejected.
  6. Next time we will try more progesterone.
  7. If you miscarry frequently we will try IVF-ET.
  8. Next time we will try donor eggs; your eggs are too old.
  9. Next time we will try aspirin and heparin.
  10. Next time we will try IVIg.
Our research is showing that there may be additional options.

A Typical Patient Return to Contents

The patients that I see are 38.6 years plus or minus 2 years. They have been unsuccessful 4.4 plus or minus 2 times and are near the end of their reproductive career, bruised, abused, and often without hope. Most of them can be helped by finding out what is wrong, and if there is a problem, providing them with the understanding and offering of the proper immune treatment.

Categories of Immune Problems Return to Contents

Our research shows that there are five categories of immune problems that can cause pregnancy loss, IVF failures and infertility, listed below. For further details, please read Consequences of Recurrent Pregnancy Loss: An Introduction to Categories 1 - 5 Immune Problems, or Overview of Reproductive Immunology.

  1. Category 1. DQ alpha matching in the couple. This results in a lack of blocking antibody to pregnancy, and the pregnancy fails.
  2. Category 2. Antibodies to Phospholipids. These are the glue molecules for implantation and placentation.
  3. Category 3. These women have developed antibodies to the baby's DNA or DNA breakdown products and this problem is reflected by a positive Anti-nuclear antibody test (ANA). This is often with a speckled pattern. We also advise that women have testing to double-stranded DNA, single-stranded DNA, polynucleotides and histones.
  4. Category 4. This is a group of women with anti-sperm antibodies.
  5. Category 5. Elevated CD 56+ Natural Killer Cells and elevated CD 19+5+ cells. The testing that typically defines this category are
    1. Immunophenotype
    2. NK Assay
    3. Antibodies to Hormones and Neurotransmitters

For those of you that may have lost a baby through miscarriage, I recommend that you read the document Overview of Reproductive Immunology. If you have had a dilatation and curettage (D and C) there is tissue that exists as paraffin blocks in the pathology department of the hospital that served you when you lost the baby (See Pathological Evaluation of Pregnancies Ending in Spontaneous Miscarriage). Immune pathology can help determine if your baby died of one of the five categories of immune attack. This one test can save money and often eliminate many of the blood tests that will be necessary to diagnose a possible immune problem.

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Alan E. Beer Center for Reproductive Immunology & Genetics
15151 National Ave. #2; Los Gatos, CA 95032; Phone: (408) 356-9500; Fax: (408) 356-9509; E-mail: info@repro-med.net.
Date: 7-24-08, Time: 9:50 am.

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