Prague Med. Rep. 2020, 121, 172-180
Serum Galectin-3 Levels Are Unlikely to Be a Useful Predictive Marker for Early-onset Preeclampsia Development
Galectin-3 (gal-3) is lectin which is presumed to interact with extracellular matrix proteins and cell surface glycoproteins in normal and pathophysiological conditions. The expression of gal-3 at the fetal-maternal interface partially overlaps that of gal-1, suggesting that an interplay between them might be important for hypertensive disorders in pregnancy like preeclampsia. The aim of our study was to test the hypothesis whether galectin-3 could be used as a predictive marker for early-onset preeclampsia development. 32 patients with early-onset preeclampsia were examined, mean age 28.8 ± 5.5; and 22 age matched normal pregnancies mean age 28.5 ± 6.0. The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used for measuring serum galectin-3 levels. There were no significant differences between serum levels of galectin-3 in sera of preeclampsia patients compared to normal pregnant women – 14.1 ± 4.77 vs. 15.7 ± 5.95 ng/ml (p>0.05). Serum galectin-3 levels correlated with maternal age (r=0.33; p=0.03) and BMI (body mass index) (r=0.52; p=0.01). Our data suggest that determination of serum galectin-3 levels may not be a useful method for prediction of early-onset preeclampsia. Studies should be aimed to other categories of biomarkers.
Keywords
Funding
This study was supported by the Centre of Scientific Research of Medical University, Pleven, Bulgaria.
References
Copyright
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
