European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Background:Preeclampsia is a multisystem disorder, which occurs only in pregnant women during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy and is associated with raised blood pressure and proteinuria. It rarely presents before 20 weeks of gestation like in hydatidformmole.Eclampsia is a syndrome with one or more episodes of convulsions in association with preeclampsia. In India, the national incidence of hypertensive disorders   is 15.2%,with incidence in nulliparous women being four times greater than in multipara.Liver Function Test (LFT) abnormalities occur in 3% of the pregnancies, and preeclampsia is the most frequent cause6.In HELLP syndrome, an elevation in liver function test results is noted7. Periportal hemorrhagic necrosis in the periphery of the liver lobule is probably the lesion that causes elevated serum liver enzymes.AIM: To Study and compare liver function tests in Pre-eclampsia and Eclampsia with normal healthy pregnant women and assess the ante-partum severity in both the diseases.
Materials and Methods: Study was conducted on 70 pregnant women admitted with pre-eclampsia and eclampsia and 35 normal pregnancy patients in between 19-26 yrs of age in third trimester of pregnancy.
Results: There is an increase in Diastolic blood pressure in mild pre-eclampsia and significant increase in severe pre-eclampsia and eclampsiapatientswhen compared to controlsThere is an increase in AST, ALT, LDH parameters in mild pre-eclampsia and significant increase in severe pre-eclampsia and eclampsia patientswhen compared to controls except for bilirubin.
Conclusion: There is a derangement of parameters of LFT in severe preeclampsia and eclampsia. But there was no significant elevation in mild pre-eclampsia.Persistant liver parameter that  increased was ALT (as it is more specific to the liver damage). These can be taken as a predictor of the disease.