Western Journal of Medical and Biomedical Sciences

FOREWARD

This Volume 6 Number 3, the third issue for WJMBS 2025 goes with the title: “Assessment of the usefulness of maternal serum beta-human chorionic gonadotrophin as predictive marker for pre eclampsia and poor clinical neonatal outcome” where authors critically looked at the maternal plasma levels of beta-human chorionic gonadotrophin and its effect on pregnancy-related hypertension and neonatal outcomes. They found that maternal serum levels of βhCG of preeclamptic women were significantly higher compared to the controls (5189.91±7.35, 3943.71±53.21 mIU, p=0.000). Also, there were significant negative correlations between βhCG, with birth weight (r=-0.371, p=0.000), and Apgar score (r= -0.385, p=0.000). They therefore concluded that the predictive power of βhCG for developing pre-eclampsia and poor neonatal outcomes was excellent and good, respectively. In another study, a team of researchers looked at the patterns, predictors and delays in diagnosing retained placenta at a tertiary hospital. They found that: Most patients were unbooked 15 (71.4%) and multiparous 11 (52.4%). and that unbooked pregnancy 15 (71.4%), preterm delivery 10 (47.6%), and previous D&C 8 (38.1%) were the common risk factors. The commonest subtype was trapped placenta 11 (52.4%) and the average diagnostic duration of retained placenta was 82.0 ± 36.9 minutes. High parity (AOR: 26.28, p=0.032) and previous D&C (AOR: 17.14, p=0.034) were found to be the independent predictors. Due to the growing incidence of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes mellitus in Nigeria and indeed the global community, a team of researchers set out to assess the pattern of dyslipidemias, associated atherogenic risk and insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetes mellitus among confirmed diabetic patients and control study group consisting of a healthy population. They found that: the combined dyslipidemia pattern had the highest percentage among the subjects, with a value of 52(45.6%) observed. This was followed by mixed dyslipidemias with a value of 50(43.9%). A higher percentage of increased risk of CVD was found among the subjects for CRI-I (74; 52%), CRI-II (73; 51.8%), and AC (75; 53.2%) compared with control CRI-I (15; 10.7%), CRI-II (7; 5.0%) and AC (15; 10.7%), p-values <0.001. A greater percentage of the subjects demonstrated insulin resistance, as indicated by HOMA-IR (79, 56.0%) and QUICKI (64, 45.4%), compared to the controls with p <0.001. HbA1_C correlated with HOMA-IR (r=0.235, p=0.005) and QUICKI (r=-0.196, p=0.020). Mixed dyslipidemias (elevated total cholesterol, elevated LDL-C and low HDL-C) were the highest form of dyslipidemia pattern observed. And that, CRI-I, CRI-II and AC were found to be better predictors of CVD than an ordinary lipid profile.

Professor Michael Simidele Odimayo

Editor-In-Chief