Yanli Liu^1,2, Fengzhen Han², Jian Zhuang⁴, Yanqiu Ou⁴, Yanji Qu⁵, Yanyan Lin², Weina Zhang², Haiping Wang^3,*, Liping Huang^1,*

Congenital Heart Disease, Vol.18, No.5, pp. 561-570, 2023, DOI:10.32604/chd.2023.030511

Abstract Background: Research on fetal congenital heart defect (CHD) mostly focuses on etiology and mechanisms. However, studies on maternal complications or pathophysiology are limited. Our objective was to determine whether vascular dysfunction exists in pregnant women carrying a fetus with congenital heart defects. Methods: We conducted a case-control study. 27 cases of pregnant women carrying a fetus with major CHD admitted to our hospital for delivery between April 2021 and August 2022 were selected. Every case was matched with about 2 pregnant complication-free controls without fetal abnormalities. The proangiogenic and anti-angiogenic factors and pregnancy outcomes were compared. Results: The proangiogenic factors… More > Graphic Abstract

Xiaoxue Zhou¹, Tingyang Yang², Ye Zhang¹, Yanping Ruan¹, Jiancheng Han¹, Xiaowei Liu¹, Ying Zhao¹, Xiaoyan Gu¹, Tingting Liu¹, Hairui Wang¹, Yihua He^1,*

Congenital Heart Disease, Vol.18, No.3, pp. 387-397, 2023, DOI:10.32604/chd.2023.029060

Abstract Background: Atrioventricular septal defects (AVSDs) are screened and diagnosed usually rely on the imaging characteristics of fetal echocardiography (FE). However, diagnosis on images is heavily depended on sonographers’ experience and the quantitative data are rarely studied. Objective: This study aimed to realize the prenatal diagnosis of AVSDs by analyzing the quantitative data on FE. Methods: One hundred and thirteen cardiac quantitative data was analyzed in 370 normal and 49 AVSDs fetuses retrospectively. The top six with the highest diagnostic accuracy rate were acquired according to the area under the curve (AUC), and the diagnostic value of six variables was analyzed.… More >

JIANBO LU^1,2,#,*, XIAOHAN SUN^3,#, XU MA^1,2,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.1, pp. 185-193, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2021.015301

Abstract The concentration of cell-free fetal DNA fragments should be detected before noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT). The fetal DNA molecules have significant clinical potential in determining the overall performance of NIPT and clinical interpretation. It is important to measure fetal DNA fraction before NIPT. However, there is still little research on how to calculate the concentration of female fetuses. Two estimation approaches were proposed to calculate fetal DNA fraction, including the fragments size-based approach, aneuploid-based approach, which are all approaches based on chromosome segments. Based on high-throughput sequencing data, two approaches to calculate the DNA fraction of male fetuses were tested… More >