Abstract:
Background: Preeclampsia is the most significant health risk for the pregnant women and the
fetus. Inconsistency in reports and shortage of literature in Ethiopia regarding platelet pattern
among preeclampsia group and normal pregnancy necessitates the current study.
Objective: To evaluate the pattern of platelet indices for prediction of preeclampsia among
pregnant women attending at Wachemo University Nigest Eleni Mohammed Memorial Referral
Hospital, Hosanna, from January to April 2019.
Method: A comparative cross-sectional study was conducted on a total of 180 pregnant women
who attended anti- natal care follow up from January to April 2019. EDTA anti coagulated
venous blood sample was analyzed usingMind ray BC-3000Plus, Shenzhen, china. The
Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test, Kruskal-Wallis H test in conjunction with the Mann
Whitney U test, Post-hock test supplemented with Benforeni, receiver operating characteristics
curve, Spear Man rank order correlation was done using SPSS version21 software. A P-value of
<0.05 was considered as statistically significant.
Result:The platelet and platelatecrit tends to decrease with severity of preeclampsia. While mean
platelet volume and platelet distribution width were significantly, increased with severity of
preeclampsia (P<0.001). Mean arterial pressure showed statistically significant positive
correlations with platelet distribution width (rho =0.731, p˂0.001), and mean platelet volume
(rho=0.674, p˂0.001). Platelet distribution width was found to be the best parameter for
predicting preeclampsia (AUC=0.986; 95%CI (0.970, 1).
Conclusion: Platelet indices such as platelet count, mean platelet volume, platelet distribution
width and platelatecrit were identified as good candidate markers for prediction of preeclampsia
in pregnant women. Serial analysis of these indices at different trimesters of pregnancy should be
carried out in future research to evaluate whether it is possible to predict preeclampsia before
second half of pregnancy.
