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      Potential markers of preeclampsia – a review

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          Abstract

          Preeclampsia is a leading cause of maternal and fetal/neonatal mortality and morbidity worldwide. The early identification of patients with an increased risk for preeclampsia is therefore one of the most important goals in obstetrics. The availability of highly sensitive and specific physiologic and biochemical markers would allow not only the detection of patients at risk but also permit a close surveillance, an exact diagnosis, timely intervention (e.g. lung maturation), as well as simplified recruitment for future studies looking at therapeutic medications and additional prospective markers. Today, several markers may offer the potential to be used, most likely in a combinatory analysis, as predictors or diagnostic tools. We present here the current knowledge on the biology of preeclampsia and review several biochemical markers which may be used to monitor preeclampsia in a future, that, we hope, is not to distant from today.

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          Circulating angiogenic factors and the risk of preeclampsia.

          Richard J. Levine, Sharon E. Maynard, Cong Qian … (2004)
          The cause of preeclampsia remains unclear. Limited data suggest that excess circulating soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase 1 (sFlt-1), which binds placental growth factor (PlGF) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), may have a pathogenic role. We performed a nested case-control study within the Calcium for Preeclampsia Prevention trial, which involved healthy nulliparous women. Each woman with preeclampsia was matched to one normotensive control. A total of 120 pairs of women were randomly chosen. Serum concentrations of angiogenic factors (total sFlt-1, free PlGF, and free VEGF) were measured throughout pregnancy; there were a total of 655 serum specimens. The data were analyzed cross-sectionally within intervals of gestational age and according to the time before the onset of preeclampsia. During the last two months of pregnancy in the normotensive controls, the level of sFlt-1 increased and the level of PlGF decreased. These changes occurred earlier and were more pronounced in the women in whom preeclampsia later developed. The sFlt-1 level increased beginning approximately five weeks before the onset of preeclampsia. At the onset of clinical disease, the mean serum level in the women with preeclampsia was 4382 pg per milliliter, as compared with 1643 pg per milliliter in controls with fetuses of similar gestational age (P<0.001). The PlGF levels were significantly lower in the women who later had preeclampsia than in the controls beginning at 13 to 16 weeks of gestation (mean, 90 pg per milliliter vs. 142 pg per milliliter, P=0.01), with the greatest difference occurring during the weeks before the onset of preeclampsia, coincident with the increase in the sFlt-1 level. Alterations in the levels of sFlt-1 and free PlGF were greater in women with an earlier onset of preeclampsia and in women in whom preeclampsia was associated with a small-for-gestational-age infant. Increased levels of sFlt-1 and reduced levels of PlGF predict the subsequent development of preeclampsia. Copyright 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society
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            Visfatin: a protein secreted by visceral fat that mimics the effects of insulin.

            Atsunori Fukuhara, Morihiro Matsuda, Masako Nishizawa … (2005)
            Fat tissue produces a variety of secreted proteins (adipocytokines) with important roles in metabolism. We isolated a newly identified adipocytokine, visfatin, that is highly enriched in the visceral fat of both humans and mice and whose expression level in plasma increases during the development of obesity. Visfatin corresponds to a protein identified previously as pre-B cell colony-enhancing factor (PBEF), a 52-kilodalton cytokine expressed in lymphocytes. Visfatin exerted insulin-mimetic effects in cultured cells and lowered plasma glucose levels in mice. Mice heterozygous for a targeted mutation in the visfatin gene had modestly higher levels of plasma glucose relative to wild-type littermates. Surprisingly, visfatin binds to and activates the insulin receptor. Further study of visfatin's physiological role may lead to new insights into glucose homeostasis and/or new therapies for metabolic disorders such as diabetes.
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              Soluble endoglin and other circulating antiangiogenic factors in preeclampsia.

              Richard Levine, Chun Lam, Cong Qian … (2006)
              Alterations in circulating soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase 1 (sFlt1), an antiangiogenic protein, and placental growth factor (PlGF), a proangiogenic protein, appear to be involved in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia. Since soluble endoglin, another antiangiogenic protein, acts together with sFlt1 to induce a severe preeclampsia-like syndrome in pregnant rats, we examined whether it is associated with preeclampsia in women. We performed a nested case-control study of healthy nulliparous women within the Calcium for Preeclampsia Prevention trial. The study included all 72 women who had preterm preeclampsia ( or =37 weeks), 120 women with gestational hypertension, 120 normotensive women who delivered infants who were small for gestational age, and 120 normotensive controls who delivered infants who were not small for gestational age. Circulating soluble endoglin levels increased markedly beginning 2 to 3 months before the onset of preeclampsia. After the onset of clinical disease, the mean serum level in women with preterm preeclampsia was 46.4 ng per milliliter, as compared with 9.8 ng per milliliter in controls (P<0.001). The mean serum level in women with preeclampsia at term was 31.0 ng per milliliter, as compared with 13.3 ng per milliliter in controls (P<0.001). Beginning at 17 weeks through 20 weeks of gestation, soluble endoglin levels were significantly higher in women in whom preterm preeclampsia later developed than in controls (10.2 ng per milliliter vs. 5.8 ng per milliliter, P<0.001), and at 25 through 28 weeks of gestation, the levels were significantly higher in women in whom term preeclampsia developed than in controls (8.5 ng per milliliter vs. 5.9 ng per milliliter, P<0.001). An increased level of soluble endoglin was usually accompanied by an increased ratio of sFlt1:PlGF. The risk of preeclampsia was greatest among women in the highest quartile of the control distributions for both biomarkers but not for either biomarker alone. Rising circulating levels of soluble endoglin and ratios of sFlt1:PlGF herald the onset of preeclampsia. Copyright 2006 Massachusetts Medical Society.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): Reprod Biol Endocrinol
                Title: Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology : RB&E
                Publisher: BioMed Central
                ISSN (Electronic): 1477-7827
                Publication date Collection: 2009
                Publication date (Electronic): 14 July 2009
                Volume: 7
                Page: 70
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Laboratory for Prenatal Medicine and Gynecologic Oncology, Department of Biomedicine, University Hospital of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
                [2 ]Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University Hospital of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
                [3 ]University Hospital of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
                Article
                Publisher ID: 1477-7827-7-70
                DOI: 10.1186/1477-7827-7-70
                PMC ID: 2717076
                PubMed ID: 19602262
                SO-VID: 44b995fa-8e0c-4412-9da7-3c0ac55a5662
                Copyright © Copyright © 2009 Grill et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
                License:

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                Date received : 8 April 2009
                Date accepted : 14 July 2009
                Categories
                Subject: Review

                ScienceOpen disciplines: Human biology
                Data availability:
                ScienceOpen disciplines: Human biology

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