Clinical value of prenatal maternal serum miRNA-19b in diagnosis of fetal congenital heart disease

AIM To investigate the clinical value of prenatal maternal serum miRNA-19b in the diagnosis of fetal congenital heart disease (CHD). METHODS Twenty-seven pregnant women with fetal CHD in our hospital between July 2011 and June 2012 were included in the study group and 27 pregnant women without fetal CHD were selected as control group. We performed real-time PCR assays to identify and validate the expression of maternal serum miRNAs in fetal CHD. Area under the curve (AUC) was used to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the maternal serum miRNA-19b for fetal CHD. RESULTS miRNA-19b was significantly upregulated in pregnant women with fetal CHD, which was validated by real-time PCR. AUC for diagnostic accuracy of miRNA-19b was 0.79. CONCLUSION Maternal serum miRNAs (miRNA-19b) could act as novel and non-invasive biomarkers for prenatal detection of fetal CHD.