The Interdependence of Fetal and Maternal Extracellular DNA in Pregnant Women with Fetal Malformations

One of the promising and quite new directions of non-invasive prenatal diagnostics can be the analysis of extracellular fetal DNA in the blood of pregnant women. Objective: determination of prognostic significance of fetal DNA level in prognosis of fetal pathology. Material and Methods: seventeen pregnant women with fetal pathology in the second trimester were examined in the dynamics of gestation in obstetric complex No. 9 in Tashkent. Control group included 29 pregnant women with physiological course of gestation and without pathology. Results: the concentration of fetal DNA in plasma of pregnant women with fetal malformations in the second trimester exceeds the indicators of pregnant women without fetal pathology in 1.8 times. The total concentration associated with the surface of cells of fetal DNA in 2.3 times higher than in women without fetal pathology. The maternal DNA in fetal pathology was significantly decreased (in 3.1 times) in the fraction associated with the surface of blood cells, whereas the level of the mother’s DNA in plasma from pregnant women with fetal abnormalities was lower in 1.7 times, in comparison with pregnant women without fetal pathology. The analysis of correlation between fetal and maternal extracellular DNA showed that this relationship is higher in the plasma and in the fraction associated with ionic interactions than in the fraction of extracellular DNA associated with cell surface proteins as in the physiological course of pregnancy, as in fetal abnormalities. Conclusions: the obtained results allow concluding that to increase the informative value of non-invasive diagnosis of fetal pathology at different stages of pregnancy, it seems appropriate to use fractions of fetal and maternal extracellular DNA associated with the surface of blood cells of the mother