BACKGROUND To study whether maternal serum hyperglycosylated human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG-h) improves first trimester prediction of pre-eclampsia when combined with placental growth factor (PlGF), pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A) and maternal risk factors. METHODS Gestational-age-adjusted concentrations of hCG, hCG-h, PlGF and PAPP-A were analysed in serum samples by time-r...

A retrospective study of 68 eclamptic women who received Magnesium sulphate at Koshi Zonal Hospital were analyzed during a one year period (2006-2007 AD). Maternal conditions at admission, associated complications in mothers and babies, delivery outcomes and cause of death were also studied in each case. There were 5240 deliveries during the period of analysis. Of which 4976 were live births, p...

OBJECTIVE To determine if pre-eclampsia is associated with reduced thyroid function during and after pregnancy. DESIGN Nested case-control study during pregnancy and population based follow-up study after pregnancy. SETTING Calcium for Pre-eclampsia Prevention trial of healthy pregnant nulliparous women in the United States during 1992-5, and a Norwegian population based study (Nord-Trondel...

BACKGROUND Maternal mortality ratio is 276 per 100,000 live births in Pakistan. Eclampsia is responsible for one in every ten maternal deaths despite the fact that management of this disease is inexpensive and has been available for decades. Many studies have shown that health care providers in low and middle-income countries have limited training to manage patients with eclampsia. Hence, we ai...

Pre-eclampsia is a common pregnancy disorder that is a major cause for maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity. Variants predisposing to pre-eclampsia might be under negative evolutionary selection that is likely to keep their population frequencies low. We exome sequenced samples from a hundred Finnish pre-eclamptic women in pools of ten to screen for low-frequency, large-effect risk va...

BACKGROUND Women with severe pre-eclampsia/eclampsia are at risk of developing chronic hypertension in future. Chronic hypertension may manifest initially as persistent hypertension at the end of the puerperium. The objective was to determine the incidence and maternal biochemical, hematological and socio-demographic risk factors for persistent hypertension in patients with pre-eclampsia/eclamp...

Hypertension in pregnancy complicates approximately 7-10% of pregnancies and remains a major cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality [1,2]. Severe pre-eclampsia/eclampsia (generalized convulsions with pre-eclampsia) which occurs in approximately 1-3 in 1000 women is thought to be a terminal progression of pre-eclampsia1 [1]. The maternal mortality rate for eclampsia is 2-3 cases...

BACKGROUND Road traffic is a major source of air pollution and noise. Both exposures have been associated with hypertension in adults, but pregnant women have been less studied. METHODS We examined single and joint effects of ambient air pollution and road traffic noise on pre-eclampsia and pregnancy-induced hypertensive disorders among 72,745 singleton pregnancies (1997-2002) from the Danish...

In the latest UK Report of the Confi dential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths (the CMACE report), 20 out of 22 deaths related to pre-eclampsia involved substandard care—a disturbing statistic that is higher than for any other cause of maternal death. The substandard care in 63% of these deaths was categorised as major and they were described as “undoubtedly avoidable”. Hyper tensive diseases acco...

Insufficient invasion of the spiral arteries by trophoblast cells is associated with the etiology of pre-eclampsia, the syndrome of hemolysis, elevated liver enzymes and low platelet counts (HELLP) and pre-eclampsia-associated intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR). Mannose-binding lectin (MBL) is a component of the innate immune system. MBL-mediated activation of the complement cascade is an i...