Blood test to predict pre-ecmplasia in pregnant women
When pre-ecmplasia knocks, it comes along with high blood pressure, severe headaches, blurring, and swelling of the feet.
What you need to know:
- There is barely any data for pre-eclampsia made public in Kenya but from studies on the condition, most of them show that the prevalence is about seven per cent.
- It is often diagnosed during prenatal appointments of expectant women when checking for their weight and blood pressure.
Twenty weeks into pregnancy, some women are likely to come head-on with a serious medical condition called pre-eclampsia.
When it knocks, it comes along with high blood pressure, severe headaches, blurring, and swelling of the feet.
With the delicate treasure you may be carrying, you may be unsure of what could be happening in your body.
There is barely any data for pre-eclampsia made public in Kenya but from studies on the condition, most of them show that the prevalence is about seven per cent.
It is often diagnosed during prenatal appointments of expectant women when checking for their weight and blood pressure.
To improve care or even warn women of a looming pre-eclampsia diagnosis, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new blood test that will help pregnant women know if they are at risk.
This new innovation is a product of research from scientists in the United States, one of them being Sarosh Rana, a maternal faetal medicine expert who works at the University of Chicago.
In a update in the university’s website, they touted the innovation as a –first-of-its-kind- prognostic test which works by detecting two proteins in the blood dubbed sFlt1 and PIGF, which then predict poor outcomes from preeclampsia with substantially better accuracy than the current methods.
They say that this test can be taken when a pregnant woman is between 23 and 35 weeks of pregnancy to predict an imminent occurrence of severe preeclampsia.
“Doctors can use this in conjunction with other clinically available tests to stratify their patients to determine whether they’re at high risk for severe pre-eclampsia and complications, or at low risk, to be managed appropriately,” said Dr Rana.
This innovation took Dr Rana and the FDA team over a decade to finally reach to a conclusion that it is accurate and worth approval.
“Women who have pre-eclampsia are at higher risk for short-term and long-term hypertensive disorders and cardiovascular disease for the remainder of their lives,” she explained.
In a press release published by the University of Chicago Medicine, they say that Rana is hopeful that this test will particularly help black women who are adversely affected by the condition.
“The test will improve the bleak disparity pregnant Black women face when it comes to preeclampsia: they are 60 per cent more likely to develop it than pregnant white women and have much higher rates of complications from preeclampsia,” shows the statement.
