Protein-Lipid Relationships in Human Plasma. III. In Pregnancy and the Newborn1

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Abstract
Plasma samples from women at the end of pregnancy and from the umbilical cords of their infants were fractionated by method number 10 of Cohn and his associates. The un-fractionated plasma and its fractions were analyzed for protein, cholesterol, and phospholipid. Moving boundary and paper electrophoretic methods were used to confirm the separation of protein components. It was shown that the protein separation is as effective and of the same type as that obtained for normal plasma from non-pregnant adult subjects. The study lends interest to observations of previous investigators that in the maternal plasma the concentration of albumin is reduced and that of alpha and beta globulins as well as of cholesterol and phospholipid is increased; also, that in cord plasma the concentration of total protein, alpha and beta globulins, total cholesterol, and total phospholipid is less than in adult plasma. The cholesterol-phospholipid ratios in cord plasma and in the fraction containing beta lipoproteins are lower than those found in adults.