Magnitude of and Its Association with Preeclampsia Among Pregnant Women in Ethiopia: A Case Control Study.

BACKGROUND

infections are associated with many complications of pregnancy including preeclampsia. It has been suggested that infection could contribute to the etiopathogenesis of preeclampsia by inducing a pro-inflammatory state.

OBJECTIVE

To assess the magnitude of infection and its association with preeclamptic and non-preeclamptic pregnant women attending antenatal care in Ethiopia.

METHODS

Hospital-based case control study was conducted among clinically diagnosed preeclamptic and non-preeclamptic pregnant women. Stool samples were collected for antigen test from study participants. The collected data were analyzed using statistical methods in SPSS version 23. Simple descriptive statistics were used to present the socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of the study subjects. Association between clinical variables, preeclampsia and infection was performed with multivariate logistic regression. A p-value of <0.05 at 95% confidence level was considered as statistically significant in all the analyses.

RESULTS

A total of 93 cases and 186 controls were included in this study. The overall prevalence of infection in all study participants was 38.9% (16/272). The prevalence of infection was higher in cases than controls, 54.3% (50/92) vs 31.1% (56/180), respectively. The mean age was 29.01 (SD±4.93) years in cases and 30.37 (SD± 6.2) years in control group. A positive association was found between infection and preeclampsia (OR: 2.45; 95% CI: 2.41-4.10).

CONCLUSION

infection has been found to be associated with preeclamptic pregnant women. In this study, the prevalence of infection was higher in cases than in controls. Age group, educational status, occupational status and body mass index were significantly associated with preeclamptic women with . The association of with preeclampsia needs to be further explored.