Soluble endoglin in preeclamptic patients with or without HELLP syndrome

OBJECTIVE: The pathogenesis of the HELLP (hemolysis, enzyme liver, low platelets) syndrome is unknown. Recently soluble endoglin (sEng) was identified as a cause of the appearance of schistocytes and liver pathology in an animal model of preeclampsia (PE). STUDY DESIGN: We explored the value of sEng in 82 women who delivered in a context of normal pregnancy (NP, n = 10), PE (n = 49), or HELLP (n = 23). RESULTS: sEng was elevated in pathological pregnancies (66.7 +/- 62 and 75.7 +/- 48 pg/mL in PE and HELLP, respectively, vs 5.29 +/- 1.25 in NP, P < .001 for both comparisons) and was correlated with an in-crease in transaminases (r(2) = 0.17; P = .05), but it was not statistically different between PE and HELLP. CONCLUSION: Although recent literature findings demonstrated a role of sEng in the pathophysiology of HELLP syndrome in animal models, we found that, at the time of delivery, sEng was not specifically elevated in preeclamptic patients with HELLP.