Results
We recruited 369 pregnant women with the risk for PE, of which 174 high-risk pregnant women were followed-up till delivery after dropouts in each trimester. The mean [SD] age of the study participants was 28.05[6.05] years. Of the identified 174 high-risk pregnant women, 67 pregnant women reported a diagnosis of PE. This represents an incidence of PE as 38.51 per 100 high-risk pregnant women during this period. The age-specific incidence rate (per 100 persons) of PE among high-risk pregnant women is described in Table 1. The highest rate of PE incidence was observed in the age group of above 30 years.
Table 2 displays the patient characteristics and risk factors associated with the development of PE. The women who had a history of multiple gestations were more likely to have PE in comparison to those who did not have such a history. The women who married consanguineously were at very high risk for the onset of PE than the one whose marriage was not consanguineous. A previous history of abortion seemed to pose a moderate risk for the onset of PE while a family history of diabetes, PE as well as a previous history of hypertension, gestational diabetes, or a conception history through IVF seemed to have no significant influence on the development of PE.
On multivariate analysis, a family history of chronic high blood pressure, history of abortion, consanguineous marriage, the sex of the new-born and the maternal blood group were independently associated with the occurrence of PE and were found to be statistically significant (Table 3). Risk factors such as the absence ofa family history of chronic hypertension, history of abortion, non-consanguineous marriage, and maternal blood group of AB-type are protective factors of PE development. While the sex of the new-born being female was found to be a risk factor for developing PE in the study population.