CIRCULATING VISFATIN LEVEL AND ITS ASSOCIATION WITH LIPID BIOMARKERS IN PREGNANCY INDUCED HYPERTENSION

Background: Hypertensive disorder in pregnancy is a major disorder that affects the fetal and maternal prognosis. A newer adipokine, visfatin has been related in the pathogenesis of pregnancy induced hypertension. The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the serum visfatin and lipid profile in women with pregnancy induced hypertension and normotensive pregnant women. Materials Methods: This cross sectional study was done at Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Khyber Medical University, Peshawar, from January to September, 2015. The patients included were 160 pregnant women with gestational age more than 20 weeks comprising of cases of pregnancy induced hypertension and controls consisting of 74 normal pregnant woman. ELISA method was used to determine serum visfatin level whereas lipid profile was determined by enzymatic colorimetric methods. Data was analyzed using SPSS version19.0. Results: Statistically significant (p 0.001) serum visfatin levels was found in patients group when compared with controls. When compared with normotensive pregnant women in patients group, the association between serum visfatin level and triglyceride (TG) were significantly higher (p 0.001). A similar trend in results was found between circulating visfatin level and HDL-C and LDL-C in patients upon comparison with controls (p 0.001). The mean difference of the ratio of TC:HDL-C ratio and LDL-C:HDL-C ratio between the patients, and control was statistically significant. Conclusion: Elevated circulating visfatin level is associated with pregnancy induced hypertension and dyslipidemia in pregnancy