The relationship between serum zinc level and preeclampsia

BACKGROUND Preeclampsia is one of the commonest causes of prenatal and maternity related death in the world. Preeclampsia is caused by multiple factors and finding any factor related to this disorder can help on time prevention of this disease, which reduces the mortality of mothers and infants. Zinc deficiency is a possible risk factor for risky pregnancies and the results of studies on this subject are controversial. This study investigated the relationship between mothers' serum zinc and risky pregnancies. METHODS This was a case-control study on 48 normal pregnancies as controls and 48 preeclamptic pregnancies as case group. The women were studied in their third month of pregnancy. Simple random sampling was done based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. The two groups were matched in mothers' age, pregnancy age, number of childbirth, and socioeconomic status. Data were collected by blood sampling and a questionnaire. Serum zinc level was assessed by atomic absorption spectrometry method. Data were analyzed using SPSS Software. RESULTS The level of serum zinc in most women in both groups was under 50 mg/dl (62.5% in normal pregnancy group and 79.2% in preeclamptic group). There was no significant difference between the mean (SD) serum zinc concentration of the two groups (47.83 (12.72) for normal pregnancy and 43.66 (11.98) for preeclampsia). There was an association between serum zinc concentration and the severity of preeclampsia (p = 0.04, r = -0.12). We did not find any significant relation between serum zinc level and the following variables: mothers' age (p = 0.15, r = -0.11), pregnancy age (p = 0.07, r = -0.24), and parity (p = 0.02, r = -0.39). CONCLUSIONS The findings of this study showed that the assessment of serum zinc level does not have any clinical values for managing preeclampsia. However, based on the relationship between serum zinc concentration and the severity of preeclampsia in this study, we recommend assessment of serum zinc concentration as an index for predicting the severity of preeclampsia.