The incidence of
hydatidiform mole as pregnancy failure is still high in Asia, leading to high
mortality and morbidity. Several risk factors play roles in the occurrence of
hydatidiform mole, including age and parity. Until now, β-human chronic gonadotropin (βhCG)
is used to predict the risk and development of hydatidiform mole. Akt, also
known as protein kinase B (PKB), is a downstream effector of the intracellular
phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling pathway, which is a central
regulatory pathway for cell proliferation, growth, differentiation, and
survival. This study aimed to analyze the correlation between three pregnancy
characteristics i.e. age, parity,
levels of βhCG and pAkt
immunoexpression. Cross sectional study was conducted on 30 samples of complete
hydatidiform mole (CHM). The βhCG
content was measured by ELISA method. The immunoexpression of pAkt was measured
by immunohistochemical staining using the phospho-Akt antibody (Ser473)
(736E11) Rabbit mAb # 3787 (CST). Cells with positive pAkt immuno-expression showed brown
color. The stronger the intensity of the visible brown color, the higher the
level of expression. pAkt immunoexpression level was then expressed as
histoscore value, which was calculated using staining intensity and positively-stained-cell distribution number.
When the immuno-expression level was high, its histoscore value would be high too. Results
of this study showed that the histoscore of pAkt samples ranged from 0-16 with a
median value 4, and the most samples (56.7%) had
histoscore ≤ 4. Correlation coefficient (p) value that was used in this study
was 0.01. Correlation between two variables was significant if p < 0.01.
Correlation coefficient (p) value between age and pAkt immunoexpression was
0.260 and thus was not statistically significant,
neither was the number of parity and pAkt immuno-expression (p = 0.524).
However, βhCG level and pAkt
immunoexpression showed statistically significant correlation (p = 0.00). It
was concluded that there was no significant correlation between maternal age
and parity and pAkt immunoxpression (p > 0.01), but there was a significant
correlation between βhCG levels and
pAkt immunoxpression (p < 0.01).