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Second trimester maternal serum ADAM12 levels in Down's syndrome pregnancies
Author(s) -
Donalson Kim,
Turner Steve,
Wastell Hilary,
Cuckle Howard
Publication year - 2008
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.2043
Subject(s) - medicine , gestation , down syndrome , obstetrics , second trimester , estriol , gestational age , pregnancy , gynecology , biology , hormone , genetics , psychiatry
Objective To estimate the utility of maternal serum ADAM12 as a Down's syndrome marker. Methods Samples from 71 Down's syndrome affected pregnancies were retrieved from − 20 °C storage together with 710 controls matched for gestation and storage time. ADAM12 was measured prior to identification of the affected pregnancies, and expressed in multiples of the gestation‐specific median (MoM). Results The median ADAM12 level in the affected pregnancies was 1.36 MoM with a 10th–90th centile range of 0.90–1.94 MoM compared with 1.01 and 0.65–1.52 MoM in the unaffected control pregnancies ( P = < 0.0001, two‐side Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test). The Mahalanobis distance between the medians was 0.96 compared with 0.92, 1.18, 1.07 and 1.24 for α‐fetoprotein, intact human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), unconjugated estriol and inhibin‐A respectively in the same samples. In unaffected pregnancies there were highly statistically significant correlations between ADAM12 and each of the other markers; in the affected pregnancies the only significant correlations were with hCG ( P ≤0.0001) and inhibin‐A ( P ≤0.05). Statistical modelling predicted that ADAM12 as a fifth marker could increase the detection rate by 2–3% or reduce the false‐positive rate by 0.9–1.7%. Conclusions ADAM12 is a second trimester marker of Down's syndrome, with discriminatory power similar to existing markers. It could be considered in multi‐marker combinations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.