Abstract
Many results concerning the differences in hCG properties from normal pregnant women and trophoblastic tumor patients have been reported. In these, the serum and urinary hCG preparations were examined for electrophoretic mobility, ion exchange chromatography, amino acid and carbohydrate compositions, ratios of biologic activity to immunologic activity and others. In this paper, the affinity of urinary hCG to a lectin, lens culinaris hemagglutinin (LcH), was compared in normal pregnant women and in patients with hydatidiform mole and choriocarcinoma.
LcH was purified from lentil beans and coupled to CNBr activated sepharose 4B beads at the ratio of 5mg LcH to one ml of the gel so as to prepare the LcH coupled sepharose column (bed volume : 20ml). For a LcH affinity chromatography of the urinary hCG, 8ml of dialyzed urine was applied to the column and then fractionated. The LcH bound fractions were eluted with 2% mannoside solution. Each fraction was examined for hCG activity by radioimmunoassay, and the amounts of hCG in the LcH unbound fraction and the LcH bound fraction were calculated in each of the urine specimens.
In most of the pregnant women, more than 95% of hCG activity in the urine was eluted in the LcH bound fraction, whereas 8 to 26% and 37 to 40% of the activity was passed through in the LcH unbound fractions in hydatidiform mole and choriocarcinoma, respectively.
These results suggest that there are some differences in the carbohydrate moieties of urinary hCG structures in pregnant women and patients with hydatidiform mole and choriocarcinoma. Furthermore, these differences could possibly contribute to differentiating normal pregnancy from trophoblastic disease.
