pregnancyinduced
hypertensive disease depends on a functional imbalance between two
eicosanoid substances with opposing physiologic effects, it may be attempted
to correct the putative imbalance by means of pharmacologic manipulation. The
demonstration that such a pharmacologic intervention would result in preventing,
halting or retarding the clinical signs of the disease (secondary prevention) would
strongly support the hypothesis; on the other hand, the absence of a preventive
effect of such an approach would cast significant doubt on the validity of the
hypothesis. The description of the design, the execution and the results of such
a clinical pathophysiologic study, using low-dose Aspirin, forms the core of this
thesis.
During the preparation of that study the need arose for a reliable method
to define a population of pregnant women at risk. A survey of the pertinent
literature revealed that a multitude of predictive tests for pregnancy-induced
hypertensive disease has been proposed, but that their validity is ill-defined or
controversial. On the basis of a critical search of the available literature we
selected the two most promising predictive tests and determined their validity
in an additional clinical study