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.