RESULTS
Three thousand and twenty pregnant women have been included in our
study. The mean age of the study participants was 29 (±5) years. Initial
body mass index of participants was 26 (±7) kg/m². Among those 3020
women, 623 (21,6%) were living and/or working in H2S
exposed areas and 194 (6,4%) met the primary endpoint, i.e.,
preeclampsia, during the follow-up period. In the exposed population,
median H2S concentration, averaged across pregnancy
length, was 300 ppb (IQR H-spread 197). Main characteristics of
H2S exposed and non-exposed pregnant women are presented
Table 1. There were no differences (p=0.20) in preeclampsia incidence
rate between H2S exposed and non-exposed pregnant women
during the follow-up period (7.5% versus 6.1%, respectively). In sharp
contrast, time to preeclampsia between the 20th and
37th week of amenorrhea was shorter (p=0.02) in
H2S exposed compared with non-exposed pregnant women
(median=30.9 months - IQR 8.6 versus 32.9 months - IQR 6.0,
respectively) (Figure1).