The Role of Fetal Hemoglobin in Maternal Blood in Determining the Severity of Pre-Eclampsia

Abstract
Background: Preeclampsia is a disorder of widespread vascular endothelial malfunction and vasospasm that occurs after 20 weeks of gestation. At this time, preeclampsia still lacks early means of diagnosis and markers that determine the severity of the condition. Extracellular fetal hemoglobin is involved in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia and its con-centration in the maternal blood can be used to determine the severity of preeclampsia.
Patients and Methods: The current work is a retrospective randomized study that was conducted on 60 pregnant women. Patients were classified into two groups. Group I (study group) included 40 patients diagnosed as preeclampsia and subdivided into group IA (included 20 patients diagnosed as mild preec-lampsia) and group IB (included 20 patients diagnosed as severe preeclampsia). Group II (control group) included 20 healthy pregnant women with uncomplicated pregnancy.
Results: The study revealed as regard socio demographic data that there was no statistically significant difference of age, parity, gestational age between the study and the control group but there was statistically significant difference of gravidity between the two groups.
As regard the vital data; there was statistically significant difference of blood pressure between mild and severe preec-lampsia groups.
As regard the investigations; there was statistically sig-nificant difference of proteinuria, fatal hemoglobin and uterine Doppler ultrasound between mild and severe preeclampsia groups.
Conclusion: Fetal hemoglobin level in maternal blood is an important, simple, cheap and available biomarker for pre-eclampsia. it can be used late in pregnancy for diagnosis of preeclampsia and for determining the severity of pre-eclampsia.