Abstract

Background: During normal pregnancy, changes in thyroid function are well-documented, i.e., hypothyroidism is a common finding seen in pregnancy leading to various adverse maternal and fetal effects, but there is no adequate information about thyroid function in pre-eclampsia.
Objective: To study maternal thyroid profile in normal pregnancy and pre-eclampsia.
Materials and Methods: Blood sample of 30 normal pregnant woman and 30 pre-eclampsia was collected and thyroid hormone assay was done by radioimmunoassay (RIA). Descriptive statistics such as mean and SD were used. Comparison between pre-eclampsia group with normal group was done by unpaired t-test. A p-value less than 0.05 was considered as significant.
Results: Thyroxine (T ) and tri-iodothyronine (T ) levels showed no difference between the normal pregnancy (9.03 ± 4 3 1.18, 1.21 ± 0.3) and pre-eclampsia patients (10.16 ± 1.13, 1.25 ± 0.11), but the thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels in pre-eclampsia patients were increased (7.22 ± 1.3) when compared to normal pregnancy (p = 0.0001). Conclusion: There was no significant difference in the thyroxine (T ) and tri-iodothyronine (T ) levels in two groups, 4 3 but there was a significant increase in thyroid stimulating-hormone (TSH) levels in pre-eclampsia patients (7.22 ± 1.3) compared to normal pregnancy (2.48 ± 1.05) (p = 0.0001).