Preeclampsia biomarkers

Abstract

Preeclampsia, which affects 3–5% of pregnant women, is the most common serious medical disorder of human pregnancy and a major cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality world-wide. Its prediction (either before, or in the early months of pregnancy, or at a pre-clinical stage in later pregnancy) offers the possibility of significant improvement in both the maternal and perinatal clinical outcomes in pregnancies complicated by this disorder. To date, no single predictive test (e.g., clinical, biophysical, biochemical, genetic) has proven sufficiently effective for it to have gained widespread acceptance into clinical practice. Instead, thus far, the most promising predictive approach has involved the use of a combination of variables (e.g., maternal risk factors, mean arterial blood pressure, uterine artery Doppler and various biomarkers). However, recent studies (e.g., Zeisler et al.1) now increasingly support the stand-alone clinical utility of especially angiogenic biomarkers (e.g., sFlt-1, PlGF) as predictive and diagnostic aids for preeclampsia. That said, further prospective studies are still required to detail the predictive characteristics of such biomarker approaches in both uni- and multi-parametric models, and to definitively determine their cost effectiveness in terms of improved maternal and perinatal outcomes in various clinical settings.