Project description:The iTRAQ analysis combined with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was performed to separate differentially expressed placental proteins from 4 pregnant women with ICP and 4 healthy pregnant women.
Project description:Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common endocrinological disorder of fertile-aged women. PCOS has been associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes and abnormalities of the placenta. By taking a quantitative label-free quantitative proteomics approach we set out to investigate if changes in the plasma proteome of pregnant women with PCOS could elucidate the mechanisms behind the pathologies observed in PCOS pregnancies. We have performed label-free quantitative proteomics on plasma samples from pregnant women with PCOS at term (n=14) and plasma samples from pregnant control women (n = 23) matched for age, gestational length and BMI. The samples are derived from BASIC pregnancy cohort from Uppsala, Sweden. A total of 169 proteins with two or more unique peptides were identified.
Project description:Epigenetics may play a central, but yet unexplored, role in the profound changes that the maternal immune system undergoes during pregnancy. We investigated changes in the methylome in isolated circulating CD4+ T cells in non-pregnant and pregnant women, during the 1st and 2nd trimester, using the Illumina Infinium Human Methylation 450K array, and explored how these changes were related to autoimmune diseases that are known to be affected during pregnancy. Pregnancy was associated with thousands of methylation differences, particularly during the 2nd trimester, where the majority of sites were hypermethylated, indicating transcriptional repression. Using a network-based modular approach disclosed several genes and pathways related to T cell signalling and activation. The pregnancy module was significantly enriched for disease-associated methylation changes related to multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus. The directionality of the changes was also in line with the previously observed effect of pregnancy on the disease activity, with a negative correlation for multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis that improves during pregnancy, and a positive correlation for systemic lupus erythematosus, a disease that instead worsens. In summary, this systems medicine approach supports the importance of the methylome in immune regulation of CD4+ T cells during pregnancy. Samples included twelve (n=12) non-pregnant women, elven (n=11) 1st trimester pregnant women and twelve (n=12)
