ABSTRACT
Objective To screen for serum protein differentially expressed between women whose fetuses had congenital heart defects(CHD) and women who had normal fetuses. Methods Serum samples were collected from pregnant women whose fetuses had CHD and those whose fe?tuses had no CHD,including a CHD group of 40 women and a control group of 10 women. The CHD group included 4 subgroups as follows:tetralo?gy of Fallot,ventricular septal defects,persistent truncus arteriosus,and a mixture of relatively rare types of CHD(n=10 each). Samples in the same group were pooled to obtain equal amounts of proteins ,and the iTRAQ proteomic approach was used to identify and quantify the proteins dif?ferentially expressed among these groups. Results We successfully identified 606 proteins,among which 47 showed at least a 1.5?fold difference between the CHD and control groups. Among the 47 proteins,23 and 24 were upregulated and downregulated,respectively. Conclusion Several proteins associated with CHD could be identified by using the iTRAQ proteomic approach ,and various proteins were involved in the pathogenesis of CHD in this study.