Some New Aspects on Emesis gravidarum

Abstract

Although nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy is extremely common, very little information on the cause and course of this disorder is available in the literature. A prospective laboratory and clinical study of 102 consecutive healthy pregnant women was undertaken to evaluate nausea and vomiting in relation to clinical data, serum electrolytes, creatinine, total protein and hemoglobin. Multigravidae suffered from emesis gravidarum at a higher rate than did primigravidae. The frequency of emesis was especially high in women with short intergestational intervals. During pregnancy there was a decline in systolic blood pressure only in non-emetic women. The diastolic blood pressure in late pregnancy was significantly higher in emetic women than in non-emetic subjects. All laboratory values were within normal ranges. However, major changes occurred during pregnancy but some alterations were noted only in the emetic pregnancy. A different response to the hormonal situation is suggested to explain the dissimilarities between the emetic and non-emetic pregnancy.

Pregnancy Nausea Related to Women’s Obstetric and Personal Histories

“…We were able to confirm the findings of previous authors that there is no significant relation between symp toms of pregnancy sickness and pre-eclamptic toxaemia in the current pregnancy [6,9,11], pregnancy weight gain [2,3], the sex of the baby [1,2,12] or the birth weight of the baby [2,9] (table 1, 2). This is in contrast with the findings of low birth weight babies in hyperemesis gravi darum, particularly severe hyperemesis [4,13], The present study confirms the significant relation between pregnancy nausea in the current pregnancy and the occurrence of pregnancy sickness in previous pregnan cies [9] (table 1).…”

“…However, our results do not agree with the findings of oth er authors who recorded an increased incidence of preg nancy sickness related to the following items: younger age [9,13,15]; maternal obesity [5,9], and primiparity [4,9,13] women who have had nausea while taking oral contra ceptive treatment [1,6,12]. Other authors agreed with our finding of no increase in the incidence of pregnancy sickness symptoms with maternal age [1,4,6], initial body weight [1], parity [12] and alcohol consumption [2], We suggest that our results differ in some respects from those of other authors [1, 2, 4-6, 9, 12-15] because we have been able to collect the data from prospective daily diaries throughout early pregnancy and enter the results into the analysis as a continuous variable.…”

“…This is at variance with the results of Jarnfelt-Samsioe et al [2] and Weigel and Weigel [14], Possibly for the first time, we have been able to assert that there appears to be no significant relation between pregnancy nausea and the length or frequency of the men strual cycle or time in labour (table 2).…”

“…In previous papers relating pregnancy sickness to other pregnancy-associated factors, results have depended on dividing women into groups either with the presence or absence of symptoms [1,2], or with other methods for grading the severity of symptoms [3][4][5][6]. As we have shown in a previous article [7], there is such a great varia tion in the severity of pregnancy sickness symptoms in every pregnancy that the assessment of these symptoms as a continuous variable is preferable.…”

The nutritional consequences of pregnancy sickness

“…There are several possibilities for early pregnancy: no symptoms of pregnancy sickness, nausea only, and nausea with vomiting (Tierson et al 1986; M. Weigel 1988, 1989). Nonetheless, nausea and/or vomiting in pregnancy is quite common and may occur in 70% of all pregnancies (Brandes 1967;Jarnfelt-Samsioe et al 1985;M. Weigel and Weigel 1989).…”