Significance of Serum Uric Acid in Pregnancy Induced Hypertension

Background and objective

Hypertension is one of the common medical complications of pregnancy and contributes significantly to maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. Uric acid (UA) is filtered, reabsorbed and secreted by the kidney. Thus, this study was conducted to assess the serum UA levels in PIH and to evaluate the diagnostic value of serum UA level in PIH.

Materials and methods

This is a hospital based comparative cross-sectional study conducted in BPKIHS. Ninety study participants were included; forty five participants were diagnosed of PIH and forty five in control group after obtaining informed consent from study participants from August 2014 to May 2015. Serum UA was done by Uricase method and serum creatinine was done by Jaffe's alkaline picrate method in cobas c311 autoanalyser. Data were expressed in frequency, percentage, mean ± S.D., median (IQR), and Independent t-test, Mann–Whitney U test were applied. p Value <0.05 is considered to be significant.

Results

Mean serum UA levels was higher in PIH compared to control group (5.46 ± 1.51 vs 4.03 ± 0.69) respectively. ROC curve demonstrated that serum UA showed a superior diagnostic efficiency (Sensitivity – 79.07%, Specificity – 71.19%) compared to creatinine (Sensitivity – 62.75%, Specificity – 27.45%) in PIH respectively.

Conclusion

The present study shows that serum UA is significantly raised in PIH compared to the control group. Assessment of uric acid is a convenient and cost-effective method for determination of severity in PIH. Thus, serum uric acid can still be used as prevalent marker for risk assessment in PIH.