Plasma level of atrial natriuretic peptide during normal pregnancy and preeclampsia

Abstract EN

objective: To assess plasma atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) level in pregnant and preeclamptic women, and to evaluate the role of this hormone in the defense mechanism against body fluids and electrolytes disorders encountered under such physiological and pathophysiological conditions.

Design: A case- series study.

Setting: Al - Batool Teaching Hospital for Gynecology and Obstetrics, Mosul, during the period from December 2003 to September 2004.

Participants: Twenty five women with normal pregnancy (group I ), 25 pregnant women with preeclampsia (group ll ) and 25 healthy non pregnant women (control group) were included in this study.

Methods: Plasma ANP, serum creatinine, urea, sodium and potassium were measured in all groups.

unpaired -t-test was used to examine the difference in the mean of the studied parameters between different groups.

Pearson correlation was used to assess the relation between different parameters within each group.

Results: The mean of plasma ANP level was significantly higher in group I (p<0.05) and group ll (p<0.0001) than that in the control group.

Furthermore, the plasma ANP level was significantly higher in group ll (p<0,0001) than that in group l.

The mean of serum creatinine and serum urea were significantly higher in group ll than that in group l (p<0.005 and p<0.0001) and control group (p<0.0001 and p<0.0001).

Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that plasma ANP level significantly increases during pregnancy especially among those who develop preeclampsia.

Since ANP plays an important role in the maintenance of body fluids and electrolytes homeostasis and blood pressure regulation, estimation of plasma ANP level may be of value in better understanding and management of pathophysiological conditions that challenge the body homeostatic mechanisms during pregnancy