Maternal preeclampsia protects preterm infants against severe retinopathy of prematurity.

OBJECTIVE To study the influence of maternal preeclampsia on the occurrence of retinopathy of prematurity. STUDY DESIGN A prospective cohort study of 324 preterm neonates with birth weight ≤ 1500 g and gestational age ≤ 32 weeks. Multiple maternal and perinatal factors were analyzed for association and confounding by multiple logistic regression analysis. RESULTS Mean birth weight was 1128 ± 240 g, and mean gestational age 29.7 ± 1.9 weeks. Twenty-four newborns (7.4%) had severe retinopathy of prematurity; 97 had any stage of retinopathy, and 227 had no retinopathy of prematurity. Preeclampsia and complete antenatal steroid treatment course reduced the risk for any stage of retinopathy of prematurity by 60% and 54%, respectively. Preeclampsia reduced the risk for severe retinopathy of prematurity by 80%. CONCLUSIONS Preeclampsia lowered the risk for occurrence of any stage and severe retinopathy of prematurity in very low birth weight infants.