Can Blood Inflammatory Markers Identify Pregnant Women with Preeclampsia? Still a Controversial Issue

Background: Preeclampsia is a unique vascular disease during pregnancy that generally appears after 20 of weeks gestation or until 6 weeks after delivery. Left un-diagnosed, preeclampsia can lead rapidly to death of both mother and fetus. Objectives: To verify the efficacy of peripheral blood inflammatory markers (BIMs) in diagnosing preeclampsia and compare them with results from other studies. Methods: Our retrospective case-control study comprised two patient groups. Pregnant women with preeclampsia and pregnant women without preeclampsia were compared for BIMs: neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR), and mean platelet volume (MPV). The primary endpoint of our research was to assess the predictive power of BIMs for preeclampsia diagnosis. Results: The sample size was calculated based on expected differences of BIMs between the control and study groups. Comparison of quantitative variables was conducted with independent sample f-test or alternatively by Wilcoxon rank sum test. The MPV values were slightly higher in the preeclampsia group, but not statistically significant. NLR and PLR did not succeed to differentiate between study and control groups. Conclusions: The diagnostic accuracy of BIMs is unsatisfactory for preeclampsia diagnosis. Discrepancies concerning these values need to be clarified. Further large prospective studies are necessary to validate the potential factor accuracy in preeclampsia diagnosis.