ABSTRACT
Basic research on autoimmunity has generally outpaced our understanding of clinical autoimmune disease, and this is also true for autoimmune diseases of spermatozoa and the gonads. Infertility in men and women with serum-or sperm-bound antibody may represent immunological infertility; however, a causal relation between antibody and infertility has not been established. Similarly, human ovarian and testicular autoimmune diseases are incompletely defined with respect to prevalence, mechanism, diagnosis and treatment. In contrast, research based on the versatile experimental autoimmune models of the gonads has contributed significantly to the general concepts of autoimmune disease pathogenesis and prevention. In this chapter we will describe the clinical diseases, and then the basic principles derived from research on the experimental models in more depth.
