Serum Magnesium Levels in Healthy Pregnant and Pre-Eclamptic Patients—A Cross-Section Study

Background: Pre-eclampsia complicates 2% 8% of pregnancies. Various efforts have been put forward for its prevention and treatment. Magnesium sulphate is presently the recommended drug for the prevention and treatment of eclampsia and severe pre-eclampsia. Objectives: The study aimed to compare the serum magnesium in a healthy pregnant women and pre-eclamptic women. It determined demographic characteristic of the study population and recommended the prophylactic usage of magnesium sulphate in pregnancy in our environment. Method: This was a prospective case control study comparing the serum magnesium levels in pre-eclampsia and normal pregnancy tertiary hospitals. The women who satisfied the inclusion criteria were recruited in the two groups (seventy five in the healthy pregnant women and seventy five in the pre-eclamptic women). The blood samples were collected and analysed for the serum magnesium and urine sample for urinalysis. Result: Total of 150 patients comprises 75 normal pregnant women and 75 cases of pre-eclampsia. The mean serum magnesium in the normal pregnant women was 0.73 (±0.14) mmol/L while in preeclampsia the level was 0.58 (±0.17) mmol/L. This is statistically significant (t = 6.120, p = 0.000). There was significance difference in the mean age of patients with pre-eclampsia and normal pregnancy. The mean parity in the pre-eclampsia was 0.80 and in the normal pregnancy was 1.4 and was statistically significant (t = 3.40, p value < 0.001). The mean gestational age of the pre-eclamptic was 36.5 weeks while it was 28.7 weeks in the normal pregnant women (t = 10.80, p = 0.000). Conclusion: The findings in this research work revealed that Corresponding author. D. A. Adekanle et al. 562 the pre-eclamptic women have lower serum magnesium level compared to the normal pregnant women, and it may therefore be interesting to do a larger multicenter study with possibility of developing a marker for this disease of theories.