ABSTRACT
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. In this study, serum levels of calcium [Ca], magnesium [Mg] and zinc [Zn] were evaluated in preeclampsia women and compared to normotensive ones. 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. 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]. 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
ABSTRACT
Spontaneous preterm labor is one of the common obstetrics problems causing several physical, psychological and economical outcomes. Although due to these outcomes and the efficacy of cares for decreasing them, preterm labor screening is cost-effective and it is still one of the challenging issues in obstetrics. In this study preterm labor screening by using cervical transvaginal sonography was evaluated. This observational cohort study was performed in Yazd, Iran. Samples were selected from pregnant women at gestational age of 21-24 weeks who had single live fetus and referred to the obstetrics clinics of two selected hospitals in Yazd. Gestational age was estimated based on the sonography of the first trimester and cervical length measured by transvaginal sonography. Data analysis was done by using t and x2 test as well as ANOVA. Statistical significant level was considered as p<0.05. From 450 participants, 47 cases had preterm labor and 6 cases had positive funneling. Mean age of women with term labor was 26.09 +/- 4.13 years and that of women with preterm labor was 26.7 +/- 3.51 years [p=0.334]. Duration of pregnancy and cervical length significantly differed between women with and without funneling [p=0.001]. The sensitivity and specificity of screening based on cervical length of 25mm were 55.5% [50.9-60.1%] and 93.6% [91.2-96%] respectively. Based on the results of the present study, transvaginal ultrasound assessment of cervical length in low risk women has an acceptable reliability for screening of preterm labor