Department of Clinical Chemistry, School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Eastern Finland and Eastern Finland Laboratory Centre, P.O. Box 1700, 70211 Kuopio, Finland.
To investigate links between first trimester Down's syndrome screening markers and adverse pregnancy outcomes; preeclampsia (PE), small for gestational age (SGA), preterm delivery (PD) and placental abruption (PA) in spontaneous, chromosomally normal pregnancies.
Cohort study in a university hospital. Data during pregnancy were routinely collected from a total study population of 2844 pregnant women between 2005 and 2007. Four study groups were pregnancies with PE (N=175), PA (N=17), PD (N=213) and SGA (N=275) plus a reference group with normal outcome (N=2164). The median MOMs of maternal serum concentrations of pregnancy associated plasma protein A (PAPP-A) and free beta human chorionic gonadotropin (fß-hCG) were compared using two-tailed pooled t-tests, continuous variables were compared using Student's two-way t-tests, and Chi-square tests were used to analyse dichotomous variables. Fisher's exact test was used when there were fewer than five units in any of the classes.
The median MOM of maternal serum PAPP-A was significantly lower in women with PE, PD and SGA (0.79, 0.80 and 0.79 MOM, respectively) than in the reference group (0.99 MOM) (p