Fig. 3

Quantification of placental inducible heme oxygenase (HO-1) during early and late gestation and in preeclampsia. (A) Levels of HO-1 detected in first trimester (FT), second trimester (ST) and third trimester (TT) and gestationally matched preeclamptic (PE) placenta. β-actin in each sample was used as an internal standard for the estimation of abundance of mRNA. RNAse protection assay was performed on samples of 10 µg total RNA isolated from human placenta at various stages of gestation. No protected bands were detected in the negative control with 10 µg yeast total RNA (not shown). (B) Graphical representation of HO-1/actin mRNA from the above experiment. Autoradiographic signals for HO-1 and actin are expressed as relative densitometric units. (C) Western blots analysis for HO-1 in third trimester (TT) and gestationally matched preeclamptic (PE) and uterine growth-restricted (IUGR) pregnancies. Expression of HO-1 is shown as 32 kDa heat shock protein. (D) Corresponding laser densitometric analysis for HO-1. Recombinant protein (RP) was used as positive control. *p < 0.05 vs FT; **p < 0.01 vs TT, n = 4.