a new method to estimate inhibition percentage of endogenous digitalis in patients with pre-eclampsia

Background: pre-eclampsia is an idiopathic pregnancy disorder characterized by appearance proteinuria and hypertension, with poorly understood etiology. it has been linked to a variety of system abnormalities, including ion transport disorders in neonatal, maternal, and placental cell lines. a new method was described to evaluate the inhibition percentage of endogenous digitalis in plasma of pre-eclampsia patients compared with normal pregnancies, with the estimation of sensitivity and specificity of the proposed test. methods: this was a case-control study consisting of 130 cases that were divided into three groups, 55 normal pregnancies (positive control), 30 non-pregnant women (negative control), and 45 preeclampsia (patients). the new method included the estimation of the percentage inhibition of endogenous digitalis by measuring specific enzyme activity of na-k atpase for the patient and positive control. the results were analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences (spss®) software version 26.0. a p-value of≤ 0.05 was considered significant. results: in the pre-eclampsia patient, the specific activity of na-k atpase was significantly lower with mean= 0.239 mg/g±0.043 compared to the control group which was 0.397 mg/g±0.021, p< 0.001. while the result of inhibition percentage of endogenous digitalis showed significantly higher in the pre-eclampsia patient (mean= 35.852 mg/g %±2.692%) compared to the control group (mean= 17.964%±1.784), with a p< 0.001. conclusions: pre-eclampsia is linked with lower erythrocyte sodium pump activity significantly in pre-eclampsia patients than in normal pregnancies. also, results show the inhibited percentage of endogenous digitalis elevation in patients with pre-eclampsia compared with normal pregnancy.