Association between placental insufficiency and manifestations of preeclampsia

Abstract

Aim. Provide evidence for the connection between placental insufficiency and preeclampsia and rationalize a unified approach to the prevention of placenta associated disorders. Materials and methods. The study was carried out in two stages. At the first (clinical statistical) stage, the incidence rates of preeclampsia (PE) and placental insufficiency (PI) were compared based on the data from Rosstat and from a regional perinatal center for the past 25 years; the most informative predictors of PI and PE were compared using the known clinical epidemiological tests. At the second stage, a prospective study of 140 high-risk pregnant patients with severe PI was carried out to confirm and generalize the hypothesis on the common predictors of PI and PE. Two groups of patients were compared: I – 68 women with isolated PI and II – 72 women with PI combined with earlyor late-onset PE. The control group included 30 women with uncomplicated pregnancy. Immunoenzyme assays, immunofluorescence, biochemical analyses, and morphological studies of placenta were used. Results. The incidence rates of PI and PE, both in the communities and in the tertiary care hospital, pointed to their intercorrelation. This similarity of informative values of PI and PE predictors related to the most important operational characteristics of clinical epidemiology indicates the lack of pathognomonic significance of the early predictors and, on the other hand, supports the concept of the common mechanisms of placenta-associated pregnancy complications. In pregnant women with a high risk of PI decompensation, PE developed in 51% of cases (early-onset – 72%, late-onset – 28%); of those, 18% were diagnosed with severe PE, and 33% – with moderate PE. The obtained data confirm that the manifestation of early-onset PE is pathogenetically related to structural and functional disorders of the early fetoplacental complex (FPC), while late-onset PE is associated with FPC changes in the subsequent stages of pregnancy, and with a synergistic effect of extragenital and obstetrical pathology. The proposed predictive model of PE connects the manifestation of PE with the status of the placenta. Conclusion. The knowledge of pathogenetically significant risk factors allows for stratifying pregnant women in order to conduct a common preventive monotherapy of placenta associated disorders. The present approach to the management of high-risk pregnancy is in line with the principles of 4Р-medicine.

Keywords

• placental insufficiency
• early-onset preeclampsia
• late-onset preeclampsia
• hemochorial placenta
• fetoplacental dysfunction
• unified approach
• prevention
• 4р-medicine