Chromosomal variants accumulate in genomes of the spontaneous aborted fetuses revealed by chromosomal microarray analysis

PLoS One. 2021 Nov 2;16(11):e0259518. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0259518. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Spontaneous abortion is an impeding factor for the success rates of human assistant reproductive technology (ART). Causes of spontaneous abortion include not only the pregnant mothers' health conditions and lifestyle habits, but also the fetal development potential. Evidences had shown that fetal chromosome aneuploidy is associated with fetal spontaneous abortion, however, it is still not definite that whether other genome variants, like copy number variations (CNVs) or loss of heterozygosity (LOHs) is associated with the spontaneous abortion. To assess the relationship between the fetal genome variants and abortion during ART, a chromosomal microarray data including chromosomal information of 184 spontaneous aborted fetuses, 147 adult female patients and 78 adult male patients during ART were collected. We firstly analyzed the relationship of fetal aneuploidy with maternal ages and then compared the numbers and lengths of CNVs (< 4Mbp) and LOHs among adults and aborted fetuses. In addition to the already known association between chromosomal aneuploidy and maternal ages, from the chromosomal microarray data we found that the numbers and the accumulated lengths of short CNVs and LOHs in the aborted fetuses were significantly larger or longer than those in adults. Our findings indicated that the increased numbers and accumulated lengths of CNVs or LOHs might be associated with the spontaneous abortion during ART.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aborted Fetus / metabolism*
  • Abortion, Spontaneous
  • DNA Copy Number Variations / genetics*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Loss of Heterozygosity / genetics
  • Male
  • Microarray Analysis
  • Pregnancy

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31801245). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.