Serum from pregnant women carrying a fetus with neural tube defect is teratogenic for rat embryos in culture.
Sera from 13 pregnant women carrying a fetus with a neural tube defect, and from 13 control women with normal pregnancies at the same stage of gestation were used in the culture of postimplantation rat embryos. Serum from women with normal pregnancies had no adverse effect on rat embryo growth and development. Serum from 10 of the women with affected fetuses had a deleterious effect on the rat embryos as abnormalities of neural tube closure were observed in 28% of the conceptuses compared to only 1.3% of the embryos cultured in control serum.
Anwar
M
M
University of Leicester, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
MacVicar
J
J
Beck
F
F
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D000013:Congenital Abnormalities / Q000209:etiology*; D004622:Embryo, Mammalian; D005314:Embryonic and Fetal Development; D005260:Female; D005315:Fetal Diseases / Q000097:blood; D006801:Humans; D009436:Neural Tube Defects / Q000097:blood*; D011247:Pregnancy; D011248:Pregnancy Complications / Q000097:blood*; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains