Preeclampsia in pregnancy can be a very serious health problem. It can cause fetal growth restriction, fetal death and morbidity, premature deliveries, and death of the mother. The exact cause of preeclampsia is not known, and treatments for efficiently curing or preventing preeclampsia are not also available yet. Preeclampsia is known to cause several problems at the same time, such as high blood pressure (hypertension), pathological edema and leakage of protein into the urine (proteinuria). Further, preeclampsia is one of the pregnancy complications that bring hypertension, proteinuria and traumatism to the mother. It is known that preeclampsia occurs to only about 3-5% of pregnant women, but it can seriously affect both the mother and her unborn (or newborn) baby, and thus, acts as a major cause of increasing perinatal mortality and morbidity rates.
Globally, at least 200,000 pregnant women die from preeclampsia every year. Its symptoms typically become evident after the 20th week of pregnancy. Preeclampsia is usually diagnosed by detecting high blood pressure of a pregnant woman or by checking her urine for protein. Early diagnosis and timely treatment of preeclampsia can remarkably reduce risks to the mother and her unborn baby, but such a monitoring method by using those symptoms as criteria is not effective for an early diagnosis of preeclampsia. Further, no treatments are currently available to cure preeclampsia. Preeclampsia can be mild, but potentially life-threatening depending on the severity of the disease. Despite such clinical risks, however, it is difficult to find the cause or the pathogenesis of preeclampsia at an early stage, or to make an early diagnosis and prognosis.
Therefore, if it becomes possible to suggest the pathogenesis of preeclampsia and make an early diagnosis and prognosis based on the same, the mother having preeclampsia and her unborn baby can be protected, and the death rate would be reduced. Even if many researches have been conducted to monitor and predict the occurrence of preeclampsia, they are limited to using a specific protein or substance, which is not sufficient to explain the whole phenomenon about the occurrence of preeclampsia and the pathogenesis thereof.
While the inventors of the present invention are trying to discover the pathogenesis of preeclampsia through the comparison between normal pregnant women and patients with preeclampsia (whether mild or severe), they have learned that the patients with preeclampsia express lower amounts of diverse glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) in the placenta and placenta enzymes responsible for sulfonation of GAGs. Based on this, the inventors developed a new way for the early diagnosis and prognosis of preeclampsia by preparing a biomarker and a composition.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds