Maternal imbalance between pro-angiogenic and anti-angiogenic factors in HIV-infected women with pre-eclampsia.

Angiogenic imbalance contributes to the development of preeclampsia. We evaluated the protein expression of the proangiogenic placental growth factor (PlGF) and transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-β1) compared with the anti-angiogenic soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase receptor (sFlt1) and soluble endoglin (sEng) in HIV-infected normotensive and pre-eclamptic pregnancies. Blood was obtained from 110 pregnant women, enrolled in four groups, namely, HIV-negative normotensives (27); HIV-positive normotensives (31); HIV-negative pre-eclamptics (27) and HIV-positive pre-eclamptics (25), and was used to measure PlGF, TGF-β₁, sFlt1 and sEng levels. Increased sFlt1 and sEng levels were associated with the pre-eclamptics (HIV negative and positive) compared with their counterparts. Decreased PlGF levels were observed between the HIV-negative pre-eclamptics versus HIV-negative normotensives, but levels differed significantly (p = 0.02) among the normotensives (HIV negative and positive). TGF-β₁ remained unchanged across all groups. Higher sEng/TGF-β₁ ratios were associated with the pre-eclamptics (HIV negative and positive) compared with their counterparts. This study demonstrated increased sFlt1 and sEng levels in pre-eclamptic compared with normotensive pregnancies, irrespective of the HIV status.