Maternal plasma angiogenic and inflammatory factor profiling in foetal Down syndrome

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.