Increased circulating levels of tissue-type plasminogen activator are associated with the risk of spontaneous abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy.

Lara J. Monteiro, Manuel Varas-Godoy, Stephanie Acuña-Gallardo, Paula Correa, Gianluca Passalacqua, Max Monckeberg, Gregory E. Rice, Sebastián E. Illanes*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Spontaneous abortion is a common complication in early pregnancy, with an incidence of around 20%. Ultrasound scan and measurement of human chorionic gonadotropin are used to identify patients at risk of spontaneous abortion; however, there is a clinical need to find new biomarkers to prospectively identify patients before the onset of clinical symptoms. Here, we aim to investigate potential biomarkers of spontaneous abortion taken in the first clinical appointment of pregnancy. A case-control study was conducted based on a prospectively collected cohort in which cases and controls were retrospectively stratified based on pregnancy outcome: normal healthy pregnancies (controls = 33) and pregnancies that ended in spontaneous abortion (cases = 10). We evaluated extracellular vesicles isolated by precipitation with ExoQuickTM and protein concentrations of tissue plasminogen activator, leptin, and adiponectin measured by ELISA. The extracellular vesicles showed the typical morphology and membrane proteins: CD63, Alix, and Flotilin-1. The size distributions of the isolated extracellular vesicles were 112 ± 27 and 118 ± 28 nm in diameter for controls and spontaneous abortion, respectively, and the total amount of extracellular vesicles did not show any difference between controls and the spontaneous abortion group. The tissue plasminogen activator showed a significant difference (p = 0.0004) between both groups, although neither adiponectin nor leptin revealed significant changes, indicating that women who had spontaneous abortions have significantly higher levels of tissue plasminogen activator than women who had normal pregnancies.

Original languageEnglish
Article number197
JournalDiagnostics
Volume10
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by grants from National Agency for Investigation and Development: ANID (Agencia Nacional de Investigaci?n y Desarrollo) previously branded as the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Investigation-CONICYT [FONDECYT Iniciaci?n 11181249].

Funding Information:
S.A.-G., P.C., G.P., M.M., G.E.R., and S.E.I.; Supervision, S.E.I.; Project Administration, M.V.-G. and L.J.M. All and L.J.M. authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. Funding: This work was supported by grants from National Agency for Investigation and Development: ANID (Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo) previously branded as the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Investigation-CONICYT [FONDECYT Iniciación 11181249].

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by the authors.

Keywords

  • Early prediction
  • Extracellular vesicles
  • Prenatal care
  • Spontaneous abortion
  • Tissue plasminogen activator

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