Molecular interactions during pregnancy: Placental expression of and subunits of human chorionic gonadotrophin in early pregnancies with Down's syndrome

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Abstract
This study examines the expression of α and β subunits of human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG) in samples of placental and decidual tissue obtained at 11–15 weeks of gestation from 30 control pregnancies and 11 pregnancies with trisomy 21. In the placental tissue, the concentrations of β-HCG mRNA and α-HCG mRNA were augmented in six and seven of the trisomy 21 cases respectively and in 16 and 14 of the control pregnancies. The median values of β-HCG mRNA and α-HCG mRNA in the two groups were not significantly different. Although the median serum free β-HCG concentration was significantly (P = 0.03) higher in trisomy 21 pregnancies than the controls, there was no relationship between serum free β-HCG and relative abundance of β-HCG mRNA in either the trisomy 21 pregnancies or the controls. Decidual expression of β-HCG and α-HCG mRNA were below detection level in the Northern blot analysis in both the trisomy 21 pregnancies and the controls. These findings suggest that the increase in maternal serum free β-HCG concentration in trisomy 21 pregnancies occurs during the post-transcriptional phase of HCG protein biosynthesis.

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