Amniotic fluid detects pregnancy complications

The amniotic fluid analysis during pregnancy helps the doctors to detect fetal abnormalities, particularly congenital abnormalities and maturity of fetus, especially of the lungs. Now doctors can predict when women are at the risk of delivering preterm and whether the infant is at a risk for infection by testing the amniotic fluid. Researchers from the Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, used imaging mass spectrometry to obtain a protein fingerprint of amniotic fluid obtained from women who delivered preterm and identified 13 proteins associated with inflammation. They found four proteins, which were accurate and sufficient to diagnose amniotic fluid inflammation. Moreover, test results could be obtained within 30 minutes, versus the 4 to 5 hours required for standard tests. To test the accuracy of these four proteins, the researchers followed 135 consecutive women presenting with symptoms of preterm labour. By checking for these four proteins, they were able to assess the risk of premature delivery. In the absence of any of the identified proteins, the patients delivered at term. Among those with one or two of the proteins present, delivery took place after a median time of 4 days. For those with three or four proteins, delivery took place within hours. The researchers also observed a correlation between the state of inflammation diagnosed by these four proteins and the development of sepsis in the newborn. Sepsis is a condition in which the body is fighting severe infection that can cause blood pressure to plummet or organs to fail. The presence of inflammation in the amniotic fluid could help neonatologists to detect sepsis in the newborn baby and they can initiate antibiotics much faster than if they waited for the results of blood cultures or other markers of sepsis.