Low serum selenium concentration is associated with preeclampsia in pregnant women from Bangladesh.

OBJECTIVES: Preeclampsia is a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy which is one of the leading causes of maternal and perinatal mortality and pre-term delivery, especially in low and middle income countries. Selenium is an important constituent of selenoproteins that act as antioxidant and have several metabolic functions. The present study was conducted to determine serum selenium concentration in preeclampsia patients in order to find out the role of selenium in preeclampsia. METHODS: This study was conducted as case-control study with 74 preeclampsia patients as cases whose gestation were ≥20 weeks (52 mild and 22 severe patients) and 118 normotensive pregnant women as controls from same gestational period. Detailed patient history was recorded during routine hospital visits. Serum selenium concentration was determined by using atomic absorption spectroscopy. Independent sample t-test and Pearson's correlation test were done for the statistical analysis using the statistical software package SPSS, version 16. RESULTS: Our study found that mean serum concentration of selenium in preeclampsia patients was significantly lower than that of healthy pregnant women (p<0.05). Further analysis for selenium concentration with disease severity explored that selenium concentration was significantly lower in severe preeclampsia in comparison to mild preeclampsia (p<0.05). We found no significant difference for selenium concentration between rural and urban preeclampsia patients (p>0.05). Pearson's correlation analysis reveals significant negative correlation of selenium with systolic blood pressure (r=-0.419, p=0.001), diastolic blood pressure (r=-0.392, p=0.001), and gestational period (r=-0.218, p=0.001). CONCLUSION: Our study found that preeclampsia patients have decreased serum selenium concentration than the healthy pregnant women.