Role of Calcium Therapy on Urinary Calcium/Creatinine Ratio in Healthy Pregnant Women and Pre-eclamptic Women

Abstract

The study has been carried out to observe the effect of calcium therapy on urinary calcium/creatinine ratio in healthy gravid women and pre-eclamptic women. Calcium/creatinine ratio has been considered for early detection of pre-eclamptic toxaemia (PET). So for the diagnosis of PET we try to investigate relation of urinary calcium, urinary creatinine, urinary calcium/creatinine ratio before and after calcium therapy. For this purpose total number of 60 healthy gravid and clinically suspected PET women of 20- 28 weeks of pregnancy having age ranged from, 17-39 years were selected. Of these 30 healthy pregnant women were taken as control group and another clinically diagnosed 30 PET women were taken as observational group. Urinary calcium/creatinine ratio was within normal range in healthy pregnant women and after calcium therapy this ratio was not significantly changed. On the other hand urinary calcium/creatinine ratio in PET women was significantly decreased and this ratio was significantly increased after calcium therapy. These observations suggest that low calcium/creatinine ratio help in early prediction of PET and calcium supplement during pregnancy may reduce the incidence of PET. DOI: 10.3329/bjpp.v25i1.5738Bangladesh J Physiol Pharmacol 2009; 25(1&2) : 7-9

Calcium Deficiency in Bangladesh

“…38 In a case-control study in Rajshahi, 30 women with preeclampsia were administered 1 g/d of calcium upon suspected diagnosis of preeclamptic toxaemia, and biochemical parameters were compared with 30 normotensive pregnant controls also receiving therapy. 71 A significant increase in mean urinary calcium:creatinine ratio (0.136-0.226) was observed in cases but not in controls. Herrera et al 88 conducted a small randomized controlled trial (RCT) of 30 Bangladeshi and 18 Columbian pregnant women, with half of each group receiving 600 mg calcium and 450 mg conjugated linoleic acid.…”

“…6 Local substantiation of the link between calcium and preeclampsia in Bangladesh is provided by a recent series of independent hospital-based cross-sectional and case-control studies (Supplemental Table 2). [65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75] Most studies have involved selection of cases with preeclampsia and eclampsia and matched normotensive controls, for whom paired serum or urinary calcium measurements were taken at either the same gestational duration or within the same time frame before delivery. Collectively, these studies suggest a decrease in total serum calcium during the third trimester, a cross-sectional association between lower calcium status and preeclampsia, and a doseresponse relationship between severity of deficiency and severity of disease.…”