Aberrant gene expression associated with recurrent pregnancy loss

Recent studies indicate that a number of factors including chromosomal abnormalities, immunological feto-maternal rejection, hormonal irregulation and anatomical factors are involved in provoking recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL). This indicates that normal cellular regulation of these factors is required for maintaining normal pregnancy. In addition, it is expected that biological processes for maintaining normal pregnancy require a series of differential gene expression. As expected, our previous investigations revealed that there are greater than or equal to30 genes showing different levels of expression between normal and RPL patients. In addition, other research groups have also identified a number of genes that are expressed aberrantly in pregnancy failure. In this review, recent study on aberrant expression levels of genes, which are grouped as immunity-related, angiogenesis-related, apoptosis-related and other groups of genes, will be discussed.