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Fetuin B may be a potential marker for predicting maternal and neonatal outcomes in intrahepatic cholestasis:
Jasmina Begum1, Sweta Singh1, Gautom Kumar Saharia2
1Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar, India.
Objective:
To investigate the levels of serum fetuin B in healthy pregnant women and women with intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (IHCP) and their association with pregnancy outcomes.
Materials And Methods:
This was a prospective case-control study, we included sixty singleton pregnant women with IHCP and sixty healthy-matched pregnant women in their third trimester. The serum fetuin B levels of these patients were analyzed. All the patients were followed up prospectively until delivery and data related to maternal, perinatal, and neonatal outcomes were obtained.
Results:
Total bile acid levels and liver function tests were significantly higher in the IHCP group than in the control group (p<0.0001 and <0.0001, respectively). The serum fetuin B concentrations were higher in the IHCP group than in the control group, without any significant group difference (p=0.105). Preterm delivery, iatrogenic preterm delivery, and birth weight ≤2.500 gm are only significantly associated with serum fetuin B levels respectively (p<0.05). The diagnostic performance of serum bile acids [area under the curve (AUC)=0.998] was significantly better than that of fetuin B (AUC=0.586) (DeLong's test p≤0.001).
Conclusion:
We neither noted a significant difference between the IHCP and control groups concerning the serum fetuin B levels nor could we correlate its levels with adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes except with birth weight, thereby serum fetuin B was not an effective marker for use in shedding light on the pathophysiology of IHCP.
