[Serum ceruloplasmin levels and cetrimonium tests in pregnancy]

Serum ceruloplamin levels were measured and Badin's cetrimonium tests (selective precipitation of serum glycoproteins with cetrimonium bromide) were performed after delivery in 72 out of 350 sera previously collected during the 4th-5th months of pregnancy. Thirty-six of the 72 sera were obtained from women whose pregnancy ended with toxaemia, and 36 from women chosen at random whose pregnancy ended normally. In women who developed toxaemia at 8-9 months, ceruloplasmin levels and cetrimonium test values were often higher at 4-5 months than in correlation between assays and tests. Ceruloplasmin determinations and cetrimonium tests therefore provide different types of information on the latent pathological condition which precedes toxaemia, but their predictive values must be taken jointly.