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Yumi Sugito, Akihiko Sekizawa, Antonio Farina, Yasuo Yukimoto, Hiroshi Saito, Mariko Iwasaki, Nicola Rizzo, Takashi Okai, Relationship between Severity of Hyperemesis Gravidarum and Fetal DNA Concentration in Maternal Plasma, Clinical Chemistry, Volume 49, Issue 10, 1 October 2003, Pages 1667–1669, https://doi.org/10.1373/49.10.1667
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Cell-free fetal DNA is present in maternal plasma (1), where its concentration increases during some abnormal conditions that can occur during pregnancy, including preterm delivery (2), preeclampsia (3)(4)(5), invasive placenta (6), and fetal trisomy 21 (7)(8). The origin of fetal DNA is not clear, but a body of evidence in the literature suggests that it comes mainly from the destruction of villous trophoblasts that border the intervillous space filled with maternal blood (5)(9). Although the pathogenesis of hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) is obscure, activation of natural killer and cytotoxic T cells is higher in the blood and uterine decidua of women with HG with respect to healthy pregnant women (10). Thus, if HG and DNA concentrations were correlated, one possible common pathway that could explain these conditions might be an overactivated maternal immune system that destroys trophoblasts, causing both HG and higher concentrations of cell-free fetal DNA. The aim of this study was to investigate a possible correlation between HG and fetal DNA concentrations. We also evaluated the relationship between the cell-free fetal DNA concentration and the severity of HG.