Heat stable and urea resistant alkaline phosphatase in maternal neutrophils from normal and Down syndrome pregnancies

L. Peleg, L. Ries, V. Getslev, A. Lusky, R. Chaki, S. Lipitz, G. Barkai*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Activity levels of total and placental alkaline phosphatase (AP) were determined in maternal serum and neutrophils of normal and Down syndrome pregnancies. The placental iso-enzyme (PAP) was identified by its relative stability to urea and heat. Significant increase in the activity of all iso-enzymes across gestational stages was observed in maternal sera of 18 normal pregnancies. However, in the neutrophil extracts of the same blood samples no differences were detected between trimesters. Another set of experiments was aimed at finding diagnostic differences of PAP activity in maternal neutrophils of normal and trisomy 21 affected pregnancies. No differences of heat stable AP activity were found in maternal samples of 19 normal and 19 Down syndrome affected pregnancies. Urea resistant AP proportions were also similar when measured after 40 minutes of exposure (13 samples in each group). However, a marginally significant increase was observed in the mean value of the Down syndrome affected samples, after 60 minutes of urea treatment. In view of the above results we conclude that neutrophil AP activity is not as yet a useful marker for the screening of trisomy 21 fetuses.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)224-228
Number of pages5
JournalPrenatal Diagnosis
Volume19
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 1999
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Down syndrome
  • Neutrophils alkaline phosphatase
  • Placental alkaline phosphatase
  • Prenatal diagnosis

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