Assessment of Platelet Profile of Healthy Volunteers in the Trimesters of Pregnancy in Benin City, Nigeria

These studies aimed at assessing platelet profile in the three trimesters of pregnancy.Subjects were apparently healthy volunteers who were staff, students and antenatal patients of a Hospital in Benin. Platelet profile was assessed using Swelab Alfa Basic model Haematological Analyser (Boule Medical AB, Stockholm, Sweden). The results were presented as mean ± SEM in tables and graphs and analysed using One Way Analysis of Variance and Duncan post Hoc test and p 0.05 was considered significant. The study showed that platelet count x 10^3/μl (277.83 ± 36.33; first trimester 193.60 ± 13.15; second trimester 185.50 ± 11.58; third trimester) and plateletcrit in percentage (0.22 ± 0.03; first trimester 0.17 ± 0.01; second trimester 0.16 ± 0.01; third trimester) reduced progressively as pregnancy advanced and this was statistically significant (p 0.05) when compared to control of 276.17 ± 34.32 x10^3/μl and 0.20 ± 0.20 respectively. A similar pattern was observed for Mean Platelet Volume (MPV). However, Platelet Width Density (PDW) in percentage increased (10.52 ± 0.22; first trimester 13.44 ± 0.30; second trimester 13.65 ± 0.41; third trimester) as pregnancy advanced. Thus PDW compensates for these reductions and a lack of this compensatory increase may aggravate the effect of thrombocytopenia in pregnancy.