Serum concentration of calcium, magnesium and zinc in normotensive versus preeclampsia pregnant women: A descriptive study in women of Kerman province of Iran

BACKGROUND Preeclampsia is a disorder of pregnancy without any specific reasons that characterized by high blood pressure and large amounts of protein in the urine. This disorder is caused by multiple factors and finding any factor related to this disorder can help on time prevention of this disease. OBJECTIVE In this study, serum levels of calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg) and zinc (Zn) were evaluated in preeclampsia women and compared to normotensive ones. MATERIALS AND METHODS This was a case-control study on 40 normotensive pregnancies as controls, 20 mild and 20 severe preeclamptic pregnancies as case groups. The women were studied in their 28-40 weeks of pregnancy. Simple random sampling was done based on inclusion and exclusion criteria and data were collected by blood sampling. RESULTS The serum Ca levels of 4.96±0.62, 4.89±0.34, 5.05±0.35 mg/dL, Mg levels of 0.83±0.08, 0.85±0.11, 0.84±0.11 mg/dL and Zn levels of 107.55±22.74, 108.00±22.40, 107.50±22.30 mg/dL was detected in normotensive, mild and severe preeclampsia, respectively. Statistical analysis revealed that there were no significant differences between three groups in serum levels of Ca (p=0.6), Mg (p=0.827) and Zn (p=0.997). CONCLUSION The findings of this study showed that the assessment of serum Ca, Mg and Zn levels does not have any clinical values for predicting and/or managing of preeclampsia. However, based on the positive relationship between serum Ca and Mg concentration and the severity of preeclampsia in this study, we recommend assessment of serum levels of these two mineral elements as indices of the severity of preeclampsia.