Soluble endoglin in preeclamptic patients with or without HELLP syndrome

Abstract

The pathogenesis of the HELLP (hemolysis, enzyme liver, low platelets) syndrome is unknown. Recently soluble endoglin (sEng) was identified as a cause of the appearance of schistocytes and liver pathology in an animal model of preeclampsia (PE). We explored the value of sEng in 82 women who delivered in a context of normal pregnancy (NP, n = 10), PE (n = 49), or HELLP (n = 23). sEng was elevated in pathological pregnancies (66.7 +/- 62 and 75.7 +/- 48 pg/mL in PE and HELLP, respectively, vs 5.29 +/- 1.25 in NP, P < .001 for both comparisons) and was correlated with an increase in transaminases (r(2) = 0.17; P = .05), but it was not statistically different between PE and HELLP. Although recent literature findings demonstrated a role of sEng in the pathophysiology of HELLP syndrome in animal models, we found that, at the time of delivery, sEng was not specifically elevated in preeclamptic patients with HELLP.