New discoveries on the biology and detection of human chorionic gonadotropin

Table 1 Occurrence of regular hCG, hyperglycosylated hCG and hyperglycosylated hCG free β in serum and urine samples [30–34, 41–43, 45–59].

	Regular hCG	Hyperglycosylated hCG	Hyperglycosylated hCG free β
1. Pregnancy
Early pregnancy (3–5 weeks)	±	✓✓✓	✓
General Pregnancy (6 weeks – term)	✓✓✓	✓	✓
Biochemical pregnancy	✓✓✓	± MK	±
Spontaneous abortion	✓✓✓	± MK	±
Ectopic pregnancy	✓✓✓	± MK	±
Down syndrome pregnancy	✓✓✓ MK	✓ MK	✓ MK
Preeclampsia	✓✓✓	± MK	±
Pituitary	✓✓✓	X	✓
2. Neoplasia
Hydatidiform mole	✓✓✓	✓	±
Invasive mole	✓	✓	✓
Choriocarcinoma	±	✓✓✓ MK	✓
Quiescent trophoblastic disease	✓✓✓	X MK	X
Placental site trophoblastic tumor	✓	±	✓✓✓ MK
Testicular germ cell tumor	±	✓✓✓ MK	✓
Non-gestational malignancies	±	±	✓✓✓ MK

All variants are present in both serum and urine samples. In this table, ✓✓✓ indicates principal hCG-form detected, ✓ indicates a key hCG-form always present, ± indicates absent or detected at very low levels, X indicates complete absence. ✓✓✓ MK and ✓ MK indicate elevated concentration is a marker for disorder, ± MK and X MK indicate deficiency or absence is a marker for disorder.

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