Forty years of anti-D immunoprophylaxis.

As rightly underscored by Velati in his article published in this issue of Blood Transfusion1, the history of haemolytic disease of the newborn due to foetal-maternal incompatibility for the D antigen, universally and succinctly known as Rh HDN, bears witness to one of the most brilliant successes achieved in Medicine. In fact, in a couple of decades (from 1941 to the early 1960s), not only were the aetiology and immunological pathogenesis2 of this disease discovered, which until then had escaped a precise nosological classification, but a fairly effective therapy was identified3 and, above all, valid prophylaxis was introduced 4–6.