Advancing Fetal Death Detection: Identification of Novel Maternal Plasma Biomarkers Through Large-Scale Proteomic Profiling

Highlight

• Proteomic profiling of maternal plasma revealed 87 proteins with differential abundance in fetal death cases versus controls.
• New biomarkers including CGA, DNAJB9, and POLR3K significantly improved fetal death discrimination beyond placental growth factor and sFlt-1.
• Shared but amplified proteomic changes were observed in fetal death with preeclampsia compared to live births, alongside distinct pathways exclusive to fetal death.
• Random forest modeling incorporating novel proteins increased sensitivity for detecting fetal death from 53% to 74% at comparable false positives.

Study Background