Home Medicine Within-subject biological variation of activated partial thromboplastin time, prothrombin time, fibrinogen, factor VIII and von Willebrand factor in pregnant women
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Within-subject biological variation of activated partial thromboplastin time, prothrombin time, fibrinogen, factor VIII and von Willebrand factor in pregnant women

  • Ann Helen Kristoffersen EMAIL logo , Per Hyltoft Petersen , Line Bjørge , Thomas Røraas and Sverre Sandberg
Published/Copyright: April 12, 2018

Abstract

Background:

During pregnancy, interpretation of results from coagulation parameters can be difficult as the physiological changes that occur may affect the biochemical parameters. The aim of this study was to describe the normal course of five coagulation parameters in healthy pregnancies, and to estimate the within-subject biological variation (CVI).

Methods:

Blood samples were obtained every 4th week during pregnancy and three samples after delivery in 20 healthy women and every 4th week during a 40-week period in 19 healthy non-pregnant women. Activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT), prothrombin time (PT), PT International Normalized Ratio (INR), fibrinogen, factor VIII clot (FVIII:C) and von Willebrand factor antigen (vWF:Ag) were analyzed. The physiological changes during pregnancy were compensated by transformation into multiples of the median (MoM) and it is natural logarithm (lnMoM) in order to establish a kind of steady state, and CVI was calculated from the standard deviation.

Results:

During pregnancy, APTT, PT and INR remained unchanged or decreased, depending upon the reagent used, while fibrinogen, FVIII:C and vWF:Ag increased gradually until delivery. The CVI in pregnancy were 2.2 and 3.0% for APTT, 2.3 and 2.6% for PT, 2.2 and 2.3% for INR, 7.2% for fibrinogen, 12.2% for FVIII:C and 11.3% for vWF:Ag, and corresponded with the CVI in non-pregnant women.

Conclusions:

Transformation of coagulation parameters in healthy pregnancies to MoM is a tool to establish a kind of steady state. Although there is a physiological change in these coagulation parameters during pregnancy, the CVI after lnMoM transformation was comparable with the CVI of non-pregnant women.


Corresponding author: Ann Helen Kristoffersen, MD, PhD, Laboratory of Clinical Biochemistry, Helse Bergen HF, Haukeland University Hospital, PB 1400, 5021 Bergen, Norway, Phone: +47 55973113, and Norwegian Quality Improvement of Laboratory Examinations (Noklus), Haraldsplass Deaconess Hospital, Bergen, Norway

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Bente Asbjørnsen and Solveig Vannes for excellent technical assistance. Thanks also to STAGO for supporting the study with reagents free of cost and Axis-Shield for Cephotest reagents free of costs. Additional appreciations to the Western Norway Regional Health Authority for supporting AH Kristoffersen with PhD and a postdoctoral fellowship, Funder Id: 10.13039/501100004257.

  1. Author contributions: All the authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this submitted manuscript and approved submission.

  2. Research funding: Declared (see Acknowledgments)

  3. Employment or leadership: None declared.

  4. Honorarium: None declared.

  5. Competing interests: The funding organization(s) played no role in the study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the report for publication.

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Supplementary Material:

The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/cclm-2017-1220).


Received: 2017-12-29
Accepted: 2018-02-13
Published Online: 2018-04-12
Published in Print: 2018-07-26

©2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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