Analysis of transcriptional activities of angiogenic biomarkers during intrauterine complications leading to preterm birth

M. Rabajdová, R. Dudič, P. Urban, V. Dudičová, P. Urdzík, M. Mareková

Department of Medical and Clinical Biochemistry, P. J. Šafárik University in Košice, Faculty of Medicine, Košice, Slovakia. maria.marekova@upjs.sk

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• Obstetrics

OBJECTIVE: Pre-eclampsia, growth retardation and preterm delivery are the most common reasons leading to increased maternal and perinatal mortality. The increased expression of hypoxia induced factors, such as HIF-1, triggers the overexpression of anti-angiogenic genes. The aim of this study was to determine the transcriptional activity of individual pro- and anti-angiogenic markers (VEGF, HIF-1, sEng, Flt-1, PlGF-1) in maternal blood samples from patients with spontaneous preterm labor, preterm labor in combination with pre-eclampsia and fetal growth restriction in comparison with physiologically terminated pregnancies.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: The transcriptional activity of specific genes was detected from the blood of patients using the chromatin immunoprecipitation capture method coupled with quantitative real-time PCR.

RESULTS: The maximum differences in mRNA levels of PlGF-1 and VEGF-A were detected in two groups: the group of normal-term birth with complications and the group of preterm labor with complications (both significantly lower than the control, p < 0.001). In contrast, a marked increase of mRNA levels was found in the same groups of patients for the HIF-1, endoglin and Flt-1 genes (p < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: According to our results, we can conclude that increased oxidative stress, increasing the expression levels of anti-angiogenic genes and reduction of the transcriptional activity of pro-angiogenic genes can provide additional information during diagnostics of pathological complications of labor.

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