The incidence of pre-eclampsia among couples consisting of Japanese women and Caucasian men

Recent data from Hiby (2004) have suggested that a combination of maternal killer immunoglobulin receptor (KIR) AA genotype and fetal HLA-C2 genotype increases the risk of pre-eclampsia. Different human populations have a reciprocal relationship between KIR AA frequency and HLA-C2 frequency. Japanese people have highest frequency of KIR-AA alleles and lowest frequency of HLA-C2 alleles. However, Caucasians have a moderate frequency of KIR-AA and HLA-C2 alleles. If this hypothesis is correct, the incidence of pre-eclampsia among couples consisting of Japanese women and Caucasian men should be higher than that among couples consisting of Japanese women and Japanese men. Therefore, we investigated the incidence of pre-eclampsia among 324 couples consisting of Japanese women and Caucasian men. The incidence of pre-eclampsia in these couples consisting of Japanese women and Caucasian men was similar to that in Japanese women and Japanese men. Our data do not support that of Hiby et al. [Hiby, S.E., Walker, J.J., O'Shaughnessy, K.M., Redman, C.W.G., Carrington, M., Trowsdale, I., Moffett, A., 2004. Combinations of maternal KIR and fetal HLA-C genes influence the risk of pre-eclampsia and reproductive success. J. Exp. Med. 200, 957-965], although we did not check the haplotypes for HLA-C and KIR.