Maternal And Umbilical Cord Plasma Renin Activity In Pregnancy Induced Hypertension:

Adel Mahmoud El Metwally Ismail

The aim of this work is to measure the maternal and umbilical cordplasma renin activity levels in normotensive pregnant women andwomen with pregnancy induced hypertension, in order to determine ifthere is a significant differences or not between the both groups.Forty pregnant women attending the obstetrics and Gynaecologydepartment of Mansoura General Hospital and Mansoura UniversityHospital were chosen for this study. Twenty women with normotensiveblood pressure (normotensive pregnancy) and twenty women withblood pressure equal to or exceeding 140/90 mmHg with proteinuriaand oedema of lower limb (pregnancy induced hypertension).These women were subjected to the following tests :(A) Estimation of plasma renin activity in maternal venous blood byredia-immunoassay tor both groups.(B) Estimation of plasma renin activity in umbilical cord blood by radioimmunoassay for both groups. Statistical analysis of the datarevealed the following results :(1) Matemal plasma renin activity is markedly increased duringnormotensive pregnancy.(2) Maternal plasma renin activity is obviously suppressed duringpregnancy induced hypertension in comparison to normotensivepregnancy (P < 0.01).(3) The umbilical cord plasma renin activity was higher than thematernal plasma renin activity on both groups (the normotensivepregnancy group and the pregnancy induced hypertensiongroup).(4) The umbilical cord plasma renin activity in the fetus born tohypertensive mothers was lower than that in foetus born tonormotensive mothers. These differences did not achievestatistical significance.