engleski

Maternal cigarette smoking and expression of selected micro-RNAs in the plasma collected after spontaneous vaginal delivery

Considering that expression of miRNAs in maternal- placental-fetal unit may signal prenatal exposure to common environmental chemical pollutants, one of the aim of our research project on the assessment of daily exposure to main toxic metals and maternal individual susceptibility as factors of developmental origins of health and disease is to evaluate expression of selected miRNAs as epigenetic markers of prenatal exposure to tobacco smoke (TS) that is a mixture of harmful chemicals including highly reactive metal ions. Expression of miR-1537, miR-190b, miR-16, miR-21 and miR- 146a were measured by quantitative PCR using custom miScript miRNA PCR Array (Qiagen, DE) and cDNA synthesis (miScript II Reverse Transcription Kit) from isolated total miRNA (miRNeasy Plasma Kit) in the samples of blood plasma from healthy smoking (n = 13) and nonsmoking (n = 13) postpartum women who had vaginal term childbirth in the University Hospital in Zagreb, Croatia. Results were analyzed by ΔΔCT method of relative quantification for miRNA PCR arrays. MiR-1537 was not expressed, whereas fold changes for other four miRNAs indicated downregulation of miR-190b and miR-21 and upregulation of miR-146a in maternal plasma related to TS exposure. Our preliminary results on selected miRNAs add to a novel research approach in environmental epigenetics of metals. For final conclusions the data on biomarkers of TS and metal exposure and effects along with epigenetic markers should be taken into consideration.

fetal programming ; prenatal exposure ; tobacco smoke ; micro-RNA

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