Question

Below are symptoms of a patient related to the Immune and Lymphatic Systems. Each person needs to answer all of these and then reply substantially to their teammates. As a team you should come to a final conclusion on all 3 questions in regards to the Patient and the symptoms. *Only the people in your group/team can see your discussions. Based on the symptoms answer the following questions:

Identify all anatomical structures related to and/or that are being affected based on the patient case information. (i.e. tissues, organs, vessels, brain components, membranes)

Explain how the anatomical structures and their physiological function/dysfunction are interrelated normally and what is going wrong with the structures in this current patient case information.

Identify and explain possible a diagnosis and what can be done to fix or reverse the current situation described in the patient case information. Please be specific and detailed.

Patient Case (Initial Review): (*before reading if you have dealt with anything related to this situation, please no that I mean no added stress and I have dealt with something similar personally so I completely understand)

Donna is a 35 year old female who is married and has a 5 year old daughter. Donna recently found out she was pregnant, but last week at 12 weeks she started to spot and went to see the doctor. At the doctors, Donna found out she was having a miscarriage and the doctors decided to look at her blood type and seemed very alarmed and asked her who her doctor was for her first child. Her blood type was A-.

*Remember to view this situation through the lens of the Immune and Lymphatic Systems, it should drive your inquiry/understanding of what is going on here.

I will also be adding some leading questions on Wednesday of this week, so be ready to check for more.

Here are some Leading Questions to think about:

Why was the first child okay?

What does blood type have to do with pregnancy and miscarriage?

Are antibodies involved?

What immune cells might be involved?

What do surface antigens have to do in this situation?

How can this be fixed, treated, and how does that process work?

Answer 1

Donna underwent miscarriage due to a condition called erythroblastalis foetalis.

It happens due to Rh factor in the blood.

A+ blood group means that Rh factor is present in the blood whereas if the blood group is A- that means the Rh factor is absent

And the presence of this Rh factor matters a lot.What happens is that when a rh negative person marries a rh positive person the foetus also has rh factor during gestation period and the fetal rbcs stimulate formation of antibodies in the mother but the these antibodies dont act on the first child ,during second pregnancy the memory cells are activated which produce antibodies against the foetus and destroy it .

Just think of the foetus as foreign object or bacteria(i am not saying it is just for simplifying it) that invades your body ,you get fever rashes but after second exposure your body fights off the bacteria very well

In second pregnancy maternal antibodies cross the placenta and lyse fetal rbcs which causes anemia,heart failure

Diagnosis

Maternal blood and rh typing

At first prenatal visits women can be tested for blood type,rh type and anti rho antibodies

And if the fetus is rh negative the pregnancy is normal without any complications

In other case where erythroblastalis foetalis is predicted,delivery is recommended if there is continuous severe fetal anemia

Corticosteroids can be given as immunosuppressant if pregnancy >24 weeks

Mother can be Rho immunoglobulin this contain anti rh antibiodies.