The study deals with evaluation of immune parameters in healthy fertile women (n = 48) versus female patients with infertility of unknown origin (n = 386). A comparative analysis has shown similar patterns of immune dysfunction in women with primary infertility (n = 179) and recurrent spontaneous abortion (n = 207). The most common markers of immune dysfunction include decreased production of blocking antibodies (86.5% of cases), low proliferative response to paternal alloantigens in mixed leukocyte reaction (MLR) shown in 51.5% of cases, and increased number of activated CD56+CD16+NK-cells (42.0%). Decreased production of MLR-blocking antibodies may be caused by low lymphocyte response, due to the partner's HLA-similarity, or by predominance of Th1/proinflammatory cytokines and low contents of circulating regulatory CD4+CD25+T-cells. The study results demonstrate that development of primary infertility and recurrent spontaneous abortions is associated with a uniform set of immune disorders, thus probably reflecting a failure of suppressor rearrangement within immune system during periovulatory period of menstrual cycle.

The aim of present work was to evaluate the effect of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) from lymphoma patients on the in vitro and in vivo homeostatic proliferation of lymphocytes. Our data have demonstrated for the first time, that MSCs from lymphoma patient are able to enhance the in vitro proliferation of donor and patient mononuclear cells (MNCs) in response to IL-2 or IL-7. This effect was observed within a wide range of MSC-to-MNC ratios (1:50-1:2). Lymphocyte reactivity to IL-2 or IL-7 was found to be an important factor determining the stimulatory effect of MSCs. Ex vivo studies in the patients undergoing autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (AHSCT) have shown that the patients co-transplanted with MSCs exhibited higher proportions of proliferating CD8+T cells (especially, memory cells) at the day of engraftment, than before AHSCT, as compared to the patients subjected to standard AHSCT protocols. Moreover, there was no an increase in apoptosis of naive CD4+T cells that was typical for standard AHSCT. These data indicate that the stimulatory effect of MSCs upon T lymphocyte proliferation following chemotherapy-induced lymphopenia concerns, mainly, the memory CD8+T cell population, whereas more efficient recovery of naive CD4+T cells is due to anti-apoptotic effects of MSCs.