Relationship between Serum Caffeine and Preeclampsia in Pregnant Women

Preeclampsia is a vascular disease that happens during pregnancy. It is created by vasospasm and vascular endothelium activity and is one of the most important complications of pregnancy. Blood pressure disorders in pregnancy are one of the three major reasons of mothers’ mortality. The aim of this study was to determine the relation between serum caffeine and preeclampsia in pregnancy.

This study was a case-control study. 44 pregnant women in Shiraz, aged 18-35 years, were enrolled in the study. Based on the criteria of entering, 22 women with preeclampsia and 22 women with normal blood pressure have been selected by systematic random sampling from women who were reffered to 2 hospitals in Shiraz. Initially, demographic data and daily caffeine intake was gathered. Then serum caffeine level was measured for all of the subjects. The data was analyzed by Student t-test and multivariate logistic regression.

The mean amount of serum caffeine was 0.309 ± 0.292 and 0.468 ± 0.314 in case group and control group, respectively (P = 0.094). Logestic regression analysis did not show a significant correlation between serum caffeine levels and preeclampsia (OR = 0.565, 95% CI: 0.013-25.42). The correlation between maternal age (OR = 1.52, 95% CI: 1.08- 2.15) and gestational age (OR = 1.43, 95% CI: 1.09-1.87) with preeclampsia were significant.

There is no significance relationship between preeclampsia and the caffeine level of the serum based on our findings. Therefore, restricting the caffeine consumption in pregnant women does not seem rational.