A strategy for identifying circulating placental RNA markers for fetal growth assessment

Abstract

Objective To evaluate whether circulating placental mRNAs in maternal plasma could serve as markers for the assessment of fetal growth or intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR). Methods From a panel of placental transcripts detectable in maternal plasma identified by microarray previously, we chose growth-related transcripts, namely CSH1, GH2, KISS1,and ADAM12, as potential growth markers. Relationships between the maternal plasma mRNA concentrations with several fetal growth indicators were studied. Maternal plasma mRNA concentrations from IUGR pregnancies with or without pre-eclampsia (PET) were compared with gestational age matched controls cross-sectionally and longitudinally. The four transcripts were quantified by one-step real-time RT-PCR. Results Maternal plasma GH2 mRNA significantly correlated with birth weight and fetal biometric measurements. Maternal plasma ADAM12 mRNA concentration was significantly higher in IUGR with PET than normal pregnancies in the cross-sectional comparison. No significant difference was observed for all markers between IUGR without PET and controls in both the cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons. Conclusion This study presents a potential strategy in identifying surrogate markers for the study of fetal growth. Circulating GH2 mRNA in maternal plasma appeared to be associated with fetal growth. The utility of this strategy and the currently assessed markers could be explored in further studies. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.