Increased decidual mRNA expression levels of candidate maternal pre-eclampsia susceptibility genes are associated with clinical severity

Abstract Introduction Pre-eclampsia (PE) has a familial association, with daughters of women who had PE during pregnancy having more than twice the risk of developing PE themselves. Through genome-wide linkage and genetic association studies in PE-affected families and large population samples, we previously identified the following as positional candidate maternal susceptibility genes for PE; ACVR1 , INHA , INHBB , ERAP1 , ERAP2 , LNPEP , COL4A1 and COL4A2 . The aims of this study were to determine mRNA expression levels of previously identified candidate maternal pre-eclampsia susceptibility genes from normotensive and severe PE (SPE) pregnancies and correlate mRNA expression levels with the clinical severity of SPE. Methods Third trimester decidual tissues were collected from both normotensive ( n = 21) and SPE pregnancies ( n = 24) and mRNA expression levels were determined by real-time PCR. Gene expression was then correlated with several parameters of clinical severity in SPE. Statistical significance was determined by Mann–Whitney U test and Spearman's Correlation. Results The data demonstrate significantly increased decidual mRNA expression levels of ACVR1 , INHBB , ERAP1 , ERAP2 , LNPEP , COL4A1 and COL4A2 in SPE ( p