The role of pravastatin in preventing preeclampsia in high-risk pregnant women: a meta-analysis with trial sequential analysis

Abstract

Objective: We aimed to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials to evaluate the prophylactic use of pravastatin in pregnant women with high-risk of preeclampsia.

Data sources: PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Central, and Web of Science were searched from inception to August 2023 with no language or filters restriction. The references from included studies, previous systematic reviews, and meta-analyses were manually searched for any additional studies.

Study eligibility criteria: Randomized controlled trials comparing pravastatin in any dose with placebo or no treatment in pregnant women with high risk for preeclampsia and up to 20 weeks of gestation were included in this meta-analysis.

Methods: We used RStudio version 4.2.2 with random effects models to compute pooled risk ratios for prespecified outcomes data. The quality assessment was conducted using version 2 of the Cochrane Risk of Bias Assessment Tool. We also performed a trial sequential analysis to evaluate the reliability of our findings.

Results: We included 3 randomized controlled trials comprising 213 patients, of whom 106 (49.8%) were allocated to the pravastatin group. There was no significant effect of pravastatin on the incidence of preeclampsia (risk ratio, 0.62; 95% confidence interval, 0.33-1.14; P=.12).

Conclusion: Our study was unable to demonstrate the benefit of pravastatin for preventing preeclampsia in high-risk pregnant women. Nevertheless, these findings comprised only preliminary studies with a small number of subjects, highlighting the need of well-designed, and adequately powered clinical trials.

Keywords: hypertension; pregnancy; statin.