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  • Perinatal/Neonatal Case Presentation
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Perinatal/Neonatal Case Presentation

Massive intracranial hemorrhage caused by neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia associated with anti-group A antibody

Journal of Perinatology volume 33, pages 79–82 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia (NAIT) is a rare but clinically important etiology of intracranial hemorrhage. There have been no reported cases of intracranial hemorrhage caused by anti-group A or anti-group B antibodies. A Japanese boy weighing 1550 g was born at 37 weeks. He suffered from refractory thrombocytopenia and developed severe intracranial hemorrhage on his second day. Despite repeated platelet, red-cell and fresh-frozen-plasma transfusions, he died at day 10 of life. Serological studies and genotyping of the patient and his parents were performed. There were no incompatible genotypes of platelet antigens between the patient and the mother. Serological studies revealed that the mother had extremely high-titer anti-group A immunoglobulin G2 (4096-fold) that reacted strongly with the father's platelets. The reaction against the father's platelets disappeared when her serum was adsorbed with group A red blood cells. Maternal anti-group A antibody was associated with NAIT and severe bilateral intracranial hemorrhage.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Drs Norihisa Koyama, Sumio Fukuda, Keiko Mouri and Patricia Bachiller for their helpful advice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatrics and Neonatology, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Nagoya City University, Nagoya, Japan

    S Kato, T Sugiura, H Ueda, K Ito, H Kakita, I Kato & H Togari

  2. Department of Blood Transfusion and Transplantation Immunology, Fukushima Medical University School of Medicine, Fukushima, Japan

    K Kawabata & H Ohto

Authors
  1. S Kato
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  2. T Sugiura
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  3. H Ueda
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  4. K Ito
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  5. H Kakita
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  6. I Kato
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  7. K Kawabata
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  8. H Ohto
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  9. H Togari
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Correspondence to T Sugiura.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Kato, S., Sugiura, T., Ueda, H. et al. Massive intracranial hemorrhage caused by neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia associated with anti-group A antibody. J Perinatol 33, 79–82 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/jp.2011.204

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/jp.2011.204

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