Fig. 3.

Application of cfRNA measurements to predict risk of spontaneous preterm delivery. (A) Heat map of the z-scores for 38 differentially expressed genes identified using cfRNA-seq (P < 0.001, exact test, likelihood ratio test, and quasi-likelihood F test) shows that genes distinguish women who delivered spontaneously preterm from women who delivered at full term. The two groups of women were separated using hierarchical clustering. (B) Means ± SD for differentially expressed genes validated using qRT-PCR in the discovery [University of Pennsylvania (I) and Denmark (II)] and validation [University of Alabama (III)] cohorts. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.0005 (Fisher exact test). (C) Receiver operating characteristic curves for classifier designed to separate women who deliver spontaneously preterm from women who deliver at full term for both the discovery cohort (University of Pennsylvania and Denmark, AUC = 0.86) and the validation cohort (University of Alabama, AUC = 0.81).