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Short-term clearance of cell-free nucleic acids after first-trimester termination of pregnancy.

Jeong YJ, Borgatta L, Kapp N, Peter I, Bianchi DW, Johnson KL

Division of Genetics, Department of Pediatrics, Tufts-New England Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts 02111, USA.

To determine the kinetics of the short-term clearance of cell-free nucleic acids in maternal plasma, we conducted a prospective cohort study of 36 women who underwent first-trimester elective surgical termination. By using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and measurement of the sex-determining region of the Y chromosome (SRY) gene (as a marker of fetal DNA), beta-hCG (a placental messenger RNA transcript), and glyceraldehyde phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH; as a marker of both total DNA and mitochondrial RNA), we found that cell-free nucleic acids in maternal plasma are not cleared within 90 minutes after the procedure, in contrast to the case of term delivery, in which levels decrease rapidly after birth.

Published 11 September 2007 in Fertil Steril, 88(3): 730-3.
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