The Role of Serum Uric Acid in Preeclampsia

Objective: the goal of this study was to assess the utility of serum uric acid in preeclampsia diagnosisand its correlation with some maternal and fetal outcomes.materials and methods: a case-control study was performed on 26 term pregnant women withpreeclampsia and 52 normal pregnant women. serum uric acid, platelet count, hematocrit, gestationalage, and birth weight of all patients were measured. data distribution was assessed with the onesample kolmogorov-smirnov test. mann-whitney u test was used to assess differences betweengroups. correlations between plasma uric acid and other parameters were evaluated with thespearman’s rho or pearson correlation test, where appropriated. receiver-operating characteristics(roc) curves were used to assess the ability of plasma uric acid to distinguish the preeclampsia fromnormal subjects. significance was set at p< 0.05.results: the mean level of plasma uric acid was 5.8 (+2) mg/dl in cases and 4.9 mg/dl in controls(p=0.04). roc curve analysis demonstrates the absence of obvious cut off point for plasma uric acid todistinguish preeclampsia. sensitivity and specificity for uric acid level of 5.5 mg/dl were 61.5% and78.8%, respectively. there was no significant linear correlation between the plasma uric acid level andother measured parameters in each group.conclusion: on the basis of our data, the clinical utility of measuring serum uric acid levels indiagnosing preeclampsia is limited.