United States: An explosive revelation found in a recent study that one in twenty pregnant women face one dangerous condition known as preeclampsia, a life threatening high blood pressure complication that kills seven hundred thousand women and five hundred thousand babies annually.
More about the finding
Earlier, there was never a way to determine exactly when it would be unleashed until now. New blood tests could assist doctors in predicting and even treating this perilous condition, as AP News reported.
According to Dr. S. Ananth Karumanchi with Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, “When something bad happens in pregnancy, you want to catch it early so you can avoid adverse outcomes for the mom and the baby,” AP News reported.
Know more about preeclampsia
This condition impacts both the mother and the baby and usually presents in the second half of the pregnancy or in the postpartum period. It is not clear to what extent or in what way several factors contribute to this kind of reaction.
Apart from hypertension, the other features of preeclampsia include proteinuria, headache, vision disorders, nausea, and sudden edema, especially of the face and hands.
It is normally confirmed by dipping a dipstick in urine and observing for protein while taking blood pressure. If it is positive, other tests are carried out, as AP News reported.
Preeclampsia can become worse very fast and leads to organ failure, stroke, preterm labor, poor growth in the baby, and many others.
What more have the experts stated?
According to the advisories of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, low-dose aspirin should be taken by pregnant patients if they have any one of the special predisposing factors, including Chronic hypertension, diabetes type I or type II before pregnancy, or chronic kidney disease.
In this respect, the initial management of preeclampsia is to give birth or to monitor the patient until she is close to her due date. Moderate to severe preeclampsia patients tend to be admitted to hospital and may be prescribed drugs to control blood pressure, avoid fits, and enhance the pulmonary maturity of the fetus.
How do the tests work?
The tests estimate ‘biomarkers’ for preeclampsia in the blood, which is precise evidence of an organism’s state at any given time.
Currently, the available tests are very limited, which is why the specificities of individual tests are not well-developed yet.
One, designed by Labcorp, can be completed between 11 and 14 weeks gestation on any pregnant patient. It estimates four early pregnancy biomarkers that together with other factors define the potential preeclampsia risk after the 20th week of gestation or before the 34th week of pregnancy.
The other two tests are; another test from Labcorp and another test from Thermo Fisher scientific these are used in the second and third trimester on hospitalized patients with the view of determining if they are likely to progress to severe preeclampsia within two weeks. Additional tests from other companies are on the way.
According to Eleni Tsigas, CEO of the nonprofit Preeclampsia Foundation, “They absolutely represent an exciting advancement, especially when you look at the field of preeclampsia and the fact that there’s been very little new introduced to the field in decades,” as AP News reported.