Placental pathologies are not associated with hyperuricemia in preeclamptic pregnancies

The mechanism of hyperuricemia in preeclampsia remains unknown. As the breakdown of the nuclear rich syncytiotrophoblast might result in the increased formation of uric acid from purine catabolism, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether placental pathologies were associated with hyperuricemia in preeclamptic pregnancies. We retrospectively reviewed medical reports with the availability of maternal serum uric acid levels and placental pathology reports of 83 singleton, preeclamptic pregnant women at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Preeclampsia was defined by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists criteria. Hyperuricemia was defined as, at least greater than or equal to, two standard deviations of normal mean values for gestational age. The placental pathological findings include infarction, syncytial knots, abruption, intravillous thrombosis, and villous pathology (i.e., edema, villitis). The relevance of hyperuricemia to the individual placental pathologic finding and the numbers of placental pathologic findings were investigated. Statistical analyses were performed using contingency table methods. We found that there was no significant correlation between hyperuricemia and individual or multiple placental pathologic findings. We concluded that placental pathologies secondary to ischemic changes may not fully explain hyperuricemia in preeclamptic pregnancies. A prospective study using morphometric measurements is needed to understand the exact role of ischemic placental damage on the maternal serum uric acid level.