An Advantage of Pregnancy?

When Mrs. Marvin Glidden, 36, gave birth to a son in Los Angeles' U.C.L.A. Medical Center earlier this month, the delivery was perfectly normal in all but one detail: on its way to the birth canal, the baby's head had to push aside a transplanted kidney located on the right side of the mother's pelvic area. Neither mother nor baby was bothered a bit, but that minor deviation from standard procedure marked a major problem that had worried doctors all through Bonnie Glidden's pregnancy.

Bonnie's potential troubles stemmed from the fact that her one working kidney had been donated by her brother. And because he was not an identical twin, she had been taking large doses of powerful drugs (Imuran and Prednisone) to keep her system from rejecting the "foreign" organ. "Those drugs are not too much unlike thalidomide," explained Bonnie's urologist, Dr. Joseph Kaufman. Even though the transplanted kidney continued to work well all through Bonnie's pregnancy--a difficult period even for healthy kidneys--the drugs' toxicity might well have done irreparable damage to her unborn child. There was no way of predicting the effects with any certainty.

To everyone's relief, young Mark Glidden turned out to be a normal, robust (7 lbs. 5 oz.) baby. Since he is only the second on record born to a mother taking "immunosuppressive" drugs, doctors are carefully refraining from drawing any fast conclusions. Still, Dr. Kaufman is impressed--not only by Mark's health but by the fact that Bonnie's kidney seemed to perform better than ever while she was pregnant. It is widely assumed that a pregnant woman somehow suppresses some of her rejection mechanism so that she can carry the partially foreign fetus. If so, there is a good chance that she may be less likely to reject other intruders. Perhaps pregnancy, along with its problems, offers a small advantage to kidney-transplant patients.

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