{"doi":"10.3389/fendo.2022.1024587","title":"Reduced expression in preterm birth of sFLT-1 and PlGF with a high sFLT-1/PlGF ratio in extracellular vesicles suggests a potential biomarker","abstract":"Preterm birth may have a pathological impact on intrauterine development of the fetal brain, resulting in developmental disabilities. In this study, we examine the expression of soluble Fms-like tyrosine kinase 1 (sFLT-1) and placental growth factor (PlGF), which is one of the vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGFs), as these play a key role in angiogenesis; in particular, we examine their effect on the sFLT-1/PlGF ratio in cases of preterm birth as compared to typical pregnancies. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was performed on samples of maternal-derived plasma and extracellular vesicles-exosomes (EVs-EXs) isolated at the third trimester, consisting of 17 samples from cases of preterm birth and 38 control cases. Our results showed that both sFLT-1 (P=0.0014) and PlGF (P=0.0032) were significantly downregulated in cases of preterm birth compared to controls, while the sFLT-1/PIGF ratio was significantly (P=0.0008) increased in EVs-EXs, but not in maternal plasma. Our results suggest that this reduced expression of sFLT-1 and PlGF with an elevated sFLT-1/PlGF ratio in EVs-EXs may represent a potential biomarker for prediction of PTB.","journal":"Frontiers in Endocrinology","year":2022,"id":289657,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9686,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":716191,"name":"Weina Ju","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":971259,"name":"Stephanie Pizzella","orcid":"0009-0009-5263-7015","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":587996,"name":"Michael Flory","orcid":"0000-0001-8453-0292","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":971260,"name":"Chu Chu","orcid":"0000-0003-2938-7862","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":459723,"name":"Yong Wang","orcid":"0000-0003-2507-8333","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":481104,"name":"Nanbert Zhong","orcid":"0000-0002-3242-5308","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":971712,"name":"Sama Hussein","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":27,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:30:22.686776Z","pmid":"36619545","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}