Maternal cardiac troponin levels in pre-eclampsia: a systematic review

We systematically review the literature for potential alterations in cardiac troponin I (cTnI) in patients who suffer from pre-eclampsia.

We used the Medline (1966-2015), Scopus (2004-2015), Popline (1974-2015), ClinicalTrials.gov (2008-2015) and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (1999-2015) databases for our primary search; we also employed the reference lists of the full-text articles that we retrieved electronically.

We included nine studies involving 719 women. Five of these studies suggested that cTnI increases in pre-eclamptic patients above the normal threshold. However, all studies reported outcomes at a single time point, and they failed to perform consecutive measurements to observe whether this effect was long lasting and whether it evolved during the course of pregnancy.

Current evidence suggests that cTnI might be elevated in pre-eclamptic pregnant women, although this observation is not always reported. Future studies are necessary to consistently observe cTnI levels throughout the prenatal period and during the first few postnatal weeks. A concurrent evaluation of other cardiovascular hemodynamic parameters could be of use in mechanistic models for predicting future cardiovascular morbidity in these women.