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Background: High levels of uric acid concentration over normal pregnant values have been reported previously in established preeclampsia, hence it was suggested to be a useful biochemical prognostic marker of the disease.Methods: This is a hospital based prospective case control study where 100 patients with preeclampsia were recruited consecutively as they were admitted. 100 non-pre-eclamptics were also recruited as control. The foetomaternal data, adverse perinatal outcomes, maternal serum uric acid levels as well as complications of preeclampsia were recorded into the protocol. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS 22.0. Level of significance was set at p<0.05.Results: The mean age in the study group was 28±6.7 years while in the control group it was 31±6.5 years. The difference in age was not statistically significant (p=0.53). The mean serum uric acid level was significantly higher amongst participants with preeclampsia than in those without preeclampsia (405.6±995 µmol/L versus 232.7±26.3 µmol/L, p=0.00). Uric acid was statistically associated with the occurrence of eclampsia (p=0.03), Severe hypertension (0.03) and birth asphyxia (p=0.01).Conclusions: The mean serum uric acid was higher in preeclampsia than non-preeclampsia patients. High levels of uric acid were found in eclampsia, severe hypertension and birth asphyxia. However, the prognostic accuracy for uric acid was low for most pregnancy outcomes.

Background: Measurement of variety of biological, biochemical and biophysical markers in pregnancy implicated in the pathophysiology of preeclampsia have been proposed to predict its development. Aim: To evaluate the accuracy of combined measure of maternal serum uric acid level and quantitative serum beta hCG versus serum beta hCG alone as prognostic indicators of pregnancy outcome among preeclamptic patients at the Federal Medical Centre, Yenagoa. Methods: This is a hospital based prospective case control study by systematic sampling selection. The two groups comprised of 100 consecutive patients each, one with pre-eclampsia (study group) and the other without pre-eclampsia (control) admitted for management into the antenatal ward and labour ward over the seven-month period of the study. The values of their serum uric acid and beta hCG levels were evaluated on admission and followed up. Data entry and statistical analysis was done using statistical package for social science (windows version 22.0. SPSS Inc; Chicago, USA). Level of significance was set at P < 0.05. Results: The mean quantitative serum β hCG level amongst the subjects (26776.6 ± 19590.5) was statistically significantly higher (p < 0.001) than the mean quantitative serum β hCG level amongst the control (7973.6 ± 4193.7). The prognostic accuracy in predicting pregnancy outcomes were: HELLP syndrome (0.33, 0.44), Eclampsia (0.50, 0.39), Acute Renal Failure (0.44, 0.33), IUGR (0.43, 0.39), IUFD (0.38, 0.27) and Birth Asphyxia (0.49, 0.38) respectively for combined measure of serum uric acid and serum β hCG, and serum β hCG alone. Conclusion: Serum β hCG levels remains a useful prognostic indicator for feto-maternal outcome in preeclamptic women. However, combined measure of serum uric acid and serum β hCG level in prognosticating pregnancy outcome in preeclamptic women was shown to have a better accuracy than serum β hCG.