No abstract

Introduction: The etiologies of diminished ovarian reserve (DOR) are still poorly understood, and many factors such as age, autoimmunity, genetics, idiopathicity, iatrogenesis, and oxidative stress (OS) play a role. Oxidative cellular damage increases following reactive oxygen species (ROS)-induced aging. This is the first study to evaluate the serum and follicular fluid (FF) thiol/disulfide homeostasis in patients under 35 years of age with DOR undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF)/intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Methods: In this study, DOR was defined by the Poseidon criteria, and Poseidon group 3 women were selected as the study group (n = 40). The control group was composed of patients with the diagnosis of mild-moderate male factor infertility (n = 30). Results: The FF and serum native and total thiol levels, the markers of the antioxidant system, were significantly decreased in the DOR group compared with the control group (p = 0.021) (p = 0.037) (p = 0.029) (p = 0.04). On the other hand, we found no significant differences in the oxidant parameters between the groups (p > 0.05). Conclusions: An intrinsic deficiency of antioxidants can play an important role in the etiology of DOR. The dietary addition of antioxidants could be beneficial in DOR patients.

The objective of this study was to assess the value of serum leptin, adiponectin, apelin, and ghrelin as biomarkers for the prediction and diagnosis of intra-hepatic cholestasis (ICP). This prospective study included pregnant women in the third trimester of pregnancy: 63 with ICP, 48 and 15 of whom had mild and severe disease, respectively, and 32 as controls. ICP women had increased median levels of serum leptin, adiponectin, apelin, and ghrelin compared to the controls (p < 0.05). These biomarkers meaningfully changed regarding the severity of ICP: While leptin was reduced, apelin and ghrelin were increased, and adiponectin was increased somewhat. To predict and diagnose ICP, the predictive values of serum leptin, adiponectin, and apelin need to be accepted as comparable, with moderate to high sensitivity and specificity; however, the predictive value of serum ghrelin was somewhat lower. More research is needed to clarify the potential properties of adipokines to gain acceptance as a predictive or diagnostic biomarker for ICP.

Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, affected pregnant women as well as many people. Aim of this study is to compare complete blood count (CBC) parameters of pregnant women infected with COVID-19 to that of healthy pregnant women and determine their prognostic features. 142 pregnant women infected with COVID-19 and 46 healthy pregnant women, included in this retrospective case-control study. Patients infected with COVID-19 were grouped as mild, moderate and severe, according to the findings of oxygen saturation and lung involvement. Age, gestational age, gravida, hospitalization length and CBC parameters of the participants were compared, according to the groups. CBC test revealed that uninfected pregnant women had statistically lower level of white blood cell count (WBC, p=0.001), platelet count (p=0,024), neutrophil count (p=0,001), lymphocytes (p=0,005), monocytes (p=0,001) and platelecrit (p=0.007) than from infected pregnant women. Evaluation of pregnant women with COVID-19 grouped into 3 categories as mild, moderate and severe showed that age, gravida and hospitalization length were comparable between groups, WBC (p=0.012) and neutrophile (p=0.001) counts of mild group were significantly lower than moderate group and there was no significant difference between moderate and severe groups regarding WBC and neutrophile counts (respectively p=0,281, p=0.542). CBC analysis is simple, applicable, widely used and cheap laboratory method. CBC parameters seem as a candidate for predicting COVID-19 clinical course. However, larger sample sized prospective studies supporting this idea are required.

Although several pathophysiological mechanisms are defined in etiology recurrent pregnancy loss, still causes of half of the cases haven’t revealed yet. It is reported that inflammatory processes take place in the etiology of the disease. In our study, we aimed to reveal the relationship between recurrent pregnancy loss with white blood cell count (WBC), C-reactive protein (CRP) and ferritin levels. We included our study 90 pregnant women having recurrent miscarriage history and 101 pregnant women without recurrent miscarriages, 191 patients in total. Maternal and gestational age, height, weight, body mass index (BMI), gravidity, parity, abortion and living children count and WBC, CRP and ferritin levels of these pregnant were evaluated retrospectively. According to outcomes, while the age (p = 0.01; p<0.05), gravidity (p = 0.00; p<0.01) and abortion counts (p = 0.004; p<0.01) of the study group were found significantly to be higher than that of the control group, weight measurement of them was significantly lower than that of the control group (p = 0.04; p <0.05). Height and BMI measurements, parity and living children counts of the groups showed no statistically significant difference (p>0.05). While WBC levels of the study group was found to be lower (p=0.045, p<0,05) than that of control group, there was no significant difference regarding ferritin and CRP levels (p> 0.05). In our study, WBC, CRP and ferritin parameters did not indicate the inflammatory background in recurrent pregnancy loss. We think that further prospective randomized controlled studies are required regarding these parameters.