Maternal plasma angiogenic and inflammatory factor profiling in foetal Down syndrome

PLoS One. 2017 Dec 15;12(12):e0189762. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0189762. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

Objective and design: Angiogenic factors are proteins that are related to certain foetal chromosomal abnormalities. The aim of this study was to determine the concentration of 60 angiogenic factors in the plasma of women with offspring possessing trisomy 21/Down syndrome (DS).

Method: After analysing karyotyping results, we selected 20 patients with foetuses possessing DS, and for the control group, we selected 28 healthy patients with uncomplicated pregnancies who delivered healthy newborns at term (i.e., 15-18 weeks of gestation). To assess the concentration of proteins in the blood plasma, we used a protein macroarray which enabled simultaneous determination of 60 angiogenic factors per sample.

Results: We observed a statistically significant increase in the concentration of these five angiogenic and inflammatory factors: TGFb1 (p = 0.039), angiostatin (p = 0.0142), I-309 (p = 0.0476), TGFb3 (p = 0.0395), and VEGF-D (p = 0.0173)-compared to concentrations in patients with healthy foetuses.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that angiogenic factors may play role in DS pathogenesis.

MeSH terms

  • Angiogenesis Inducing Agents / blood*
  • Angiostatins / blood
  • Blood Proteins / genetics*
  • Chemokine CCL1 / blood
  • Chromosome Aberrations
  • Down Syndrome / blood*
  • Down Syndrome / genetics
  • Down Syndrome / pathology
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Infant, Newborn
  • Karyotyping
  • Maternal Inheritance / genetics*
  • Pregnancy
  • Transforming Growth Factor beta1 / blood
  • Transforming Growth Factor beta3 / blood
  • Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor D / blood

Substances

  • Angiogenesis Inducing Agents
  • Blood Proteins
  • CCL1 protein, human
  • Chemokine CCL1
  • TGFB1 protein, human
  • TGFB3 protein, human
  • Transforming Growth Factor beta1
  • Transforming Growth Factor beta3
  • Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor D
  • Angiostatins

Grants and funding

This work was supported by grant numbers 101/KNOW/2015 from The Leading National Scientific Center, Medical University of Bialystok, Poland, and N/ST/MN/16/001/1133 from the Ministry of Higher Education. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.