Post-hoc evaluation of peripheral blood natural killer cell cytotoxicity in predicting the risk of recurrent pregnancy losses and repeated implantation failures

Abstract

Peripheral blood NK cytotoxicity assay (NKC) is one of the commonly utilized diagnostic tools for recurrent pregnancy losses (RPL) and repeated implantation failures (RIF). In this retrospective cohort study, we aimed to assess the cutoff values of NKC for RPL and RIF. A total of 883 women were included in this study; 24 nonpregnant fertile women, 604 nonpregnant women with three or more RPL, 163 nonpregnant women with two or more of RIF, 48 normal pregnant women, and 44 pregnant women with a history of RPL. Peripheral blood NKC assay was performed by flow cytometry. The differences between groups were analyzed using Student’s t-test, a logistic regression analysis, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Both nonpregnant fertile and normal pregnant women had significantly lower NKC at an effector to target cell ratio (E:T) of 50:1 (13.5 ± 1.1% and 12.9 ± 1.0%, respectively) when compared to women with RPL and RIF, and pregnant women with a history of RPL (23.6 ± 0.3%, 23.9 ± 0.5%, and 23.7 ± 1.0%, P < 0.0001 respectively). In addition, the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve for RPL and RIF using pre-conception NKC was 0.863 (P < 0.0001) and 0.879 (P < 0.0001), respectively, and for RPL using post-conception NKC was 0.736 (P = 0.001). These findings suggest that NKC significantly distinguishes nonpregnant women with RPL and RIF from fertile controls and pregnant RPLwomen from normal pregnant controls.