Recently, for the first time, Professor Kun Sun’s team at Xinhua Hospital of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine found that maternal plasma levels of ELABELA hormone concentrations in fetuses with congenital heart disease were significantly lower than those in normal controls. This suggests a significant relationship between ELABELA hormone and the development of fetal congenital heart disease.
The etiology of congenital heart disease is unclear. It is now believed that congenital heart disease may be formed by the interaction of environment and genes, except for a few congenital heart disease caused by chromosomal variants or genetic mutations, most of which are disseminated cases, which also makes it difficult to study its etiology. Currently, the diagnosis of congenital heart disease relies on prenatal imaging, such as fetal echocardiography, and there are no clear biomarkers.
In 2017, Kun Sun’s team came across an article in Science that said that the offspring of pregnant rats with knockout ELABELA hormone develop abnormal cardiovascular development. Is this also the case in humans? With the support of the NSF Key Project for International Collaboration, the research team conducted extensive clinical data studies and analyses. Through two consecutive cohorts of pre-experiments, the blood concentrations of ELABELA hormone were found to be significantly lower in pregnant women with precardiac fetuses than in controls, suggesting that its use as a gestational marker for fetal precardiac disease would facilitate the early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of precardiac disease.
The team said that further studies of ELABELA hormone expression, distribution, or regulation will be conducted during early pregnancy, the period of cardiac origin, to confirm the mechanisms and rationale for ELABELA hormone in the development of precardiac disease. At the molecular level, the team will also study the mechanism of action of ELABELA hormone through animal models.
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