Croatian Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, and Croatian Society of Perinatal Medicine of Croatian Medical Association
Abstract
Blighted ovum is a form of miscarriage, involving the absence or disappearance of an embryo very early in pregnancy. Due to contemporary lack of understanding of the nature of blighted ovum, our objective was to demonstrate the glycosylation patterns of placental proteins in this failure of pregnancy. Six placentas were taken from women with blighted ovum and twentyone placentas were provided from healthy women undergoing elective termination of normal pregnancies. Olygosaccharide branches were detected by Western-blot method using lectins: SNA and PHA-E, after preliminary separation of proteins by discontinuous SDS-PAG electrophoresis. Much stronger expression of GP74 has been identified in blighted ovum at the beginning of the eleventh week of gestation (with PHA-E), than in normal placenta. The same result was obtained for GP25 being stronger in blighted ovum at the end of eleventh week (with SNA). It is possible to conclude that the differences in glycoprotein changes beetwen the blighted ovum and the normal placenta, can only be found at the quantitative level, but not at the qualitative level.»Blighted ovum« (anembrionalna trudnoća) predstavlja oblik pobačaja, koji uključuje nedostatak ili nestanak zametka vrlo rano tijekom trudnoće. Dosadašnja skromna saznanja o ovom poremećaju potaknula su nas na detaljnija ispitivanja prikaza glikozilacijskih obrazaca placentarnih proteina. Promjene glikoproteinskog sastava detektirane su Western-blot metodom koristeći lektine SNA i PHA-E, koja je slijedila nakon preliminarne separacije proteina diskontinuiranom PAGE elektroforezom. Uspjeli smo identificirati mnogo jaču ekspresiju GP 74 u blighted ovum-u, nego u normalnoj placenti na početku jedanaestoga tjedna trudnoće, koristeći lektin PHA-E. Isti smo rezultat dobili i za GP25, koji je bio jačeg intenziteta u blighted ovum-u pri kraju jedanaestoga tjedna, koristeći lektin SNA. Naši rezultati navode nas na zaključak da se razlika između blighted ovum-a i normalne placente može uočiti samo na razini kvantitativnih glikoproteinskih promjena, ali ne i na kvalitativnoj razini
