Abstract
Author(s): Dina Y. Mansour*, Mohamed A. Elkady, Khaled R. Gaber, Mona K. Farag and Mohamad Aly Fareed
Background: Preeclampsia (PE) is considered one of the leading causes of maternal and fetal morbidities. In the Egyptian population, studies were made for discovering biomarkers to help in the diagnosis of PE and in its prediction in order to avoid PE consequences through proper antenatal care. MiRNAs showed through the last decade their involvement in the pathogenesis of PE.
Objective: To investigate the levels of expression of miRNA 210 and 152 in patients with PE compared to healthy pregnant females in the third trimester.
Subjects and methods: This study was a case control study carried out in the Department of Prenatal Diagnosis and Fetal Medicine, National Research Centre, and Ain Shams University Maternity Hospital Causality Unit from January 2017 until January 2019, where the levels of expression of miRNA 210 and 152 were investigated in patients with PE. There were 20 cases, divided into 5 cases of mild PE and 15 cases of severe PE, and 10 controls of healthy pregnant females. After the miRNA extraction from the serum of the candidates, a real-time quantitative reverse-chain polymerase chain reaction has been used to estimate the Ct values of both groups.
Results: Our results showed upregulation of miRNA210 with 2.6 and 3.4 fold changes in mild and severe PE cases, respectively, with the ROC curve showing an accuracy of 80.95%, sensitivity of 82.61%, specificity of 78.95%, PTV of 82.61, AUC of 82.27, and p-value of 0.001. For miRNA152, our results showed its downregulation with a 0.1–0.4 fold change in mild and severe PE cases, respectively, with the ROC curve showing an accuracy of 67.0%, sensitivity of 73.91%, specificity of 57.89%, PPV of 68, AUC of 67, and p-value of 0.1.
Conclusion: These results show that miRNA210 is a powerful diagnostic biomarker in PE through its upregulation, and its expression is related to the severity of the disease, so it can be used as a potential predictor for PE at an earlier gestational age.