Efficiency of sFlt-1/PlGF Ratio in Preeclampsia Diagnosis

Background and Objectives: Preeclampsia is a health issue characterized by a new onset of hypertension after 20 weeks of gestation and proteinuria. This is a multiple organ disorder and is associated with significant maternal and fetal mortality. Material and Methods: The study is a prospective one and included 69 pregnant women (17 with hypertension without criteria for PE, 26 with severe PE and 26 with moderate PE) with an age of gestation between 24 and 40 weeks. Subjects were chosen from those who referred to the Oradea County Emergency Clinical Hospital, Department of Obstetrics-Gynecology between January 2020 and December 2022. We collected other characteristics from observation sheets and from patients and we measured the sFlt-1/PlGF ratio after 20 weeks of pregnancy if patients presented with suspected preeclampsia. All the results were collected in Excel analysis by SPSS. Results: In our study, 37.68% had severe preeclampsia, the same percentage had moderate PE and 24.63% presented only with hypertension. The mean of sFLT-1/PlGF for severe preeclampsia was 78.282 ng/mL, and for moderate, it was 50.154 ng/mL. For those who did not have criteria for preeclampsia, it was 29.076 ng/mL. When we compared the values of sFLT-1/PlGF in moderate PE and hypertension, we found that there was a statistically significant difference between this two, and the same conclusion was also obtained for severe PE and hypertension and for severe and moderate PE. Conclusions: This marker can be useful for improving the outcomes for pregnant women with preeclampsia. In addition, for newborns, sFlt-1/PlGF can be helpful because we can correctly and promptly manage a patient affected by this disease before 34 weeks of pregnancy. Our study demonstrates that the correlation between the values of sFlt-1/PlGF and the type of preeclampsia are positive; thus, if the values are high, the pregnant woman likely will develop severe preeclampsia with early onset. In addition, the sFlt-1/PlGF ratio has the highest accuracy for differentiating PE patients from pregnant women who did not develop sign and symptoms for preeclampsia. Our results are in line with the conclusions of other studies that researched the association between sFlt-1/PlGF and clinical diagnosis of preeclampsia.