Premium
Second‐trimester unconjugated oestriol levels in maternal serum from chromosomally abnormal pregnancies using an optimized assay
Author(s) -
Crossley J. A.,
Aitken D. A.,
Connor J. M.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
prenatal diagnosis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.956
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1097-0223
pISSN - 0197-3851
DOI - 10.1002/pd.1970130406
Subject(s) - trisomy , medicine , radioimmunoassay , down syndrome , aneuploidy , second trimester , estriol , obstetrics , gynecology , andrology , pregnancy , endocrinology , gestation , chromosome , biology , estrogen , genetics , psychiatry , gene
Second‐trimester unconjugated oestriol (UE3) levels were measured retrospectively in maternal serum from 78 chromosomally abnormal pregnancies and 390 matched controls using a radioimmunoassay kit (Amersham AMERLEX‐M) optimized for use in the second trimester. Reduced levels of UE3 were found in a group of 49 Down's syndrome pregnancies with a median UE3 level of 0·79 multiples of the median (MOM) of the controls. Four trisomy 18 pregnancies had UE3 levels less than 0·7 MOM. There was a highly significant level of correlation between alpha‐fetoprotein (AFP) and UE3 levels in the controls ( r = 0·25, P <0·01), the Down's syndrome pregnancies ( r = 0·44, p 0·01), and the other chromosome abnormalities ( r = 0·61, p 0·01). When used as an additional marker to AFP and human chorionic gonadotrophin in screening for Down's syndrome, UE3 does not appear to add to the sensitivity of such screening.