SUMMARYThe relationship between the ability of female inbred mice to produce an anti‐paternal humoral immune response to allogeneic multiparity and the genotype of the female and male strains has been investigated. Only three, allH‐2bhaplotype strains, were ‘responder’ strains and produced anti‐paternal alloantibody which did not exhibit C'‐dependent cytotoxicity. ‘Non‐responder’ strains produced no alloantibody in spite of multiple pregnancies with H‐2 and non‐H‐2 incompatible male strains. However, even responder strains did not produce alloantibody with all incompatible male strains. The absence of a response in a responder strain mated with a male strain differing at only theH‐2locus implicated a role for non‐H‐2 influences. A study of the specificityo of pregnancy‐induced alloantibody suggested that this represented only a fraction of the total alloantibody population induced by conventional immunization in the same strain combination. It is suggested that in pregnancy only the anti non‐H‐2 humoral responses remain similar to those induced by immunization, whereas anti‐H‐2 humoral responses are either absent or are restricted to a fraction of the total foreign H‐2 specificities presented. These observations are discussed in relation to the nature of the immunogenic stimulus in pregnancy and the expression of histocompatib
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