Credit score: King’s School London
Two easy blood exams may assist to foretell which pregnant girls with hypertension are liable to severe issues, together with seizures, stillbirth and new child dying, a brand new examine carried out in Sierra Leone has discovered.
The examine is the primary to point out how such exams, that are easy to carry out and provides outcomes inside half-hour, may assist to enhance security for moms and infants in pregnancies affected by hypertension in settings the place maternity and neonatal care assets are restricted.
Led by King’s School London in collaboration with the Princess Christian Maternity Hospital in Sierra Leone and revealed within the journal Hypertension, the examine included 488 pregnant girls admitted to hospital with suspected preeclampsia—a being pregnant situation that causes hypertension and protein within the urine, and might result in life-threatening issues for mom and child.
Girls with preeclampsia have low blood ranges of placental development issue (PlGF)—a protein that’s essential for the wholesome improvement of the placenta throughout being pregnant.
The crew discovered that utilizing both of two blood exams (referred to as RONIA and Lepzi Quanti), designed to measure the degrees of PlGF at “point of care” (on admission to hospital), may assist to establish girls liable to creating severe issues associated to preeclampsia. In girls who had been lower than 34 weeks pregnant, the exams appropriately recognized 95%–100% of ladies liable to maternal dying or seizures, and 100% of infants liable to stillbirth.
“The tests were very good at ruling out serious problems when results were normal, meaning these women were unlikely to have life-threatening complications. Abnormal test results identified women at higher risk who may need closer monitoring or earlier delivery of the baby,” says Dr. Katy Kuhrt, Scientific Analysis Fellow and Registrar in Obstetrics and Gynecology on the Division of Girls & Kids’s Well being at King’s and lead creator of the examine.
“Our study shows that simple, bedside blood tests could help doctors decide which women need urgent care, improving safety for mothers and babies in pregnancies affected by high blood pressure,” says Dr. Kuhrt.
Preeclampsia impacts 2%–8% of pregnancies worldwide and annually leads to about 46,000 maternal deaths and 500,000 fetal or new child deaths. These in lower- and middle-income international locations (LMICs) are disproportionately affected as a consequence of restricted entry to diagnostic and monitoring tools and neonatal intensive care.
Whereas PlGF testing improves administration and outcomes of preeclampsia, present strategies used within the clinic require blood samples to be despatched to the laboratory for processing—making them troublesome to implement in LMICs. Importantly, the 2 new exams used on this examine may be carried out on the hospital bedside utilizing solely a small drop of blood, acquired utilizing a finger prick. Outcomes can be found in 15–half-hour.
“Serious outcomes such as stillbirths can be easily avoided if we just know who is at risk. This test accurately provides this knowledge for the first time, and is suitable in settings where stillbirths are common. We are very excited about this test really being able to save lives,” says Professor Andrew Shennan, Professor of Obstetrics at King’s and senior creator of the examine.
Constructing on this work, the NIHR World Well being Analysis Group PAPAGAIO (Preterm preeclampsiA: PlAcental Progress issue testing for discount of Antagonistic Outcomes), led by Professor Shennan, is working to introduce point-of-care PlGF testing into medical care of ladies with suspected preeclampsia in Brazil, India, Sierra Leone and Zambia to know the impression of testing on medical administration and outcomes for moms and their infants.
Extra data:
Katy Kuhrt et al, Level-of-Care Placental Progress Issue for Predicting Antagonistic Outcomes in Sierra Leone, Hypertension (2025). DOI: 10.1161/hypertensionaha.125.24526
Offered by
King’s School London
Quotation:
Easy blood exams establish pregnant girls liable to severe issues from hypertension in Sierra Leone (2025, September 19)
retrieved 19 September 2025
from https://medicalxpress.com/information/2025-09-simple-blood-pregnant-women-complications.html
This doc is topic to copyright. Aside from any honest dealing for the aim of personal examine or analysis, no
half could also be reproduced with out the written permission. The content material is supplied for data functions solely.
