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The Relationship Between Preeclampsia and Arsenic Concentration in the Peripheral Blood

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Abstract

Preeclampsia (PE) is a pregnancy-specific disorder, which is one of the leading causes of maternal, fetal, and neonatal death, particularly in developing countries. Arsenic (As), which is commonly found in soil and groundwater, has been associated with various complications of pregnancy, such as spontaneous abortion, hypertension, and stillbirth. Hence, the study was used to explore the relationship between PE and blood concentration of As in this study. Blood concentration of As during pregnancy was measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The results shown that the mean blood concentration of As was gradually increased from the control group to the severe PE group (P < 0.0001). Elevated blood concentration of As was associated with the prevalence of PE (OR = 12.81, 95% CI: 2.43–67.39 and 27.55, 1.75–433.43 for middle and high vs. low). Furthermore, elevated blood concentration of As was associated with the severity of PE. Additionally, we observed that blood concentration of As was associated with the hypoproteinemia (P = 0.001, rs = 0.37). Blood concentration of As was negatively corelated with the mean corpuscular volume (MCV) (P = 0.040, rs =  − 0.23) and positively corelated with the mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC) (P = 0.044, rs = 0.23). Overall, our results indicated that the blood concentration of As can significantly predict the occurrence of PE. Additionally, we provided evidence that blood concentration of As may affect the occurrence of hypoproteinemia. These findings may provide some ideas for the prevention of PE and pregnancy complications.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the medical staff in the obstetric department of the SSL Central Hospital for their help in recruiting subjects, and postgraduates Ruiping Zhang, Lingyan Wei, and Xia Gao for their help in the date collection.

Funding

The research work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. lzujbky-20196), and the Social Science and Technology Development (Key) Fund of Dongguan City of China (Grant No. 2015108101033).

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  1. Yudong Pu has equal contribution.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health, School of Public Health, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China

    Haixia Liu, Shiwei Ai, Xiaoxue Wang, Ke Wang & Yuhui Dang

  2. Songshan Lake Central Hospital of Dongguan City, Dongguan, China

    Yudong Pu & Shuzhen He

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  1. Haixia Liu
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Contributions

Yuhui Dang and Shiwei Ai contributed to the conception of research; Yudong Pu and Shuzhen He contributed to the recruiting subjects and the sampling collection and performed the experiment; Ke Wang contributed to the data collection and management; Xiaoxue Wang performed statistical analysis; Haixia Liu wrote the manuscript; Shiwei Ai and Yuhui Dang contributed to the revision of the manuscript. All authors approved the final manuscript for submission.

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Correspondence to Yuhui Dang.

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This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Songshan Lake Central Hospital of Dongguan City and the Ethics Committee of the School of Public Health of Lanzhou University.

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Liu, H., Pu, Y., Ai, S. et al. The Relationship Between Preeclampsia and Arsenic Concentration in the Peripheral Blood. Biol Trace Elem Res 200, 3965–3974 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-021-02988-5

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