Selection of the study participants
The study population was selected from the enrolled participants of the Garbh-Ini cohort. Inclusion criteria: The mothers who had their blood sera stored at enrolment i.e., < 14 weeks, 18-20 weeks, 26-28 weeks of pregnancy and at delivery, and gave birth to live, singleton neonates without any birth defects were included in this study. Exclusion criteria: Mothers who had documented major illness like HIV, autoimmune diseases, asthma or malignancy, bacterial or viral infections like dengue fever, malaria, Torch infection or vaginal bacterial infection at any time during pregnancy and those who took immunomodulatory drugs during pregnancy were excluded. All these factors have been reported to be associated with increased expression of HLA-G, which could confound the association of sHLA-G protein levels with SGA outcome. The study flow is shown in Figure1.