Abstract
Author(s): Iwona Janosz (AEF), Piotr Bodzek (EF), MikoÅaj BaliÅ (EF), Aleksandra Barbachowska (EF), Anita Olejek (AE)
The HE4 protein, human epididymis protein 4, is a new protein and one of the most promising markers to improve diagnostic efficiency in the detection of ovarian malignancies, particularly epithelial carcinoma, which accounts for 90% of all ovarian cancers in the population of pregnant women. Pregnant women are the population for which there are few reports on the concentration of the HE4 protein in the available literature. This knowledge is extremely important, because pregnancy coexists with an ovarian tumor in 1–2% of women. The paper presents an overview of available literature describing HE4 concentration changes in pregnant women. There is a certain regularity in this study, namely that HE4 concentrations are significantly higher in the third trimester of pregnancy than during the first two trimesters. HE4 concentrations have also been examined in the aspect of in vitro fertilization, where there was no change in its serum concentration at any of the stages of the procedure, and in the aspect of preterm delivery, where the effectiveness of this protein as a possible marker of this pathology has been confirmed. In conclusion, it should be noted that the HE4 protein in the population of pregnant women is of the greatest importance in women with a coexisting ovarian tumor and as a marker of preterm delivery, which has so far been confirmed only in women after in vitro fertilization. At the same time, the problem of the HE4 marker in the population of pregnant women requires further research on larger groups of women.