Advances Against Preeclampsia, Potential Prediction

Preeclampsia, a sudden-onset and sometimes fatal prenatal disease, may strike up to 8 percent of pregnant women worldwide. Researchers have now developed a dependable pregnancy-specific animal model for laboratory testing and may have a predictive test that would allow early intervention. The studies are reported in The American Journal of Pathology.

In as many as 8 percent of pregnancies worldwide, women who seem fine for months develop preeclampsia, a serious complication causing symptoms including high blood pressure, severe swelling, and problems with placental development. The untreatable and unpredictable condition, with no known cause, often requires premature delivery and is sometimes fatal to both mother and fetus.

In a new study, researchers led by a team at Brown University and Women & Infants Hospital describe two major advances: a well-defined animal model of preeclampsia and a potential lab test for diagnosing the disease in people.

“Our model is the first pregnancy-specific animal model,” said Surendra Sharma, professor of pediatrics at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a research scientist at Women & Infants, “and our predictive assay is the first one where we can go back to the first trimester and predict problems.”

Sharma is a senior author on the study, published online this month in The American Journal of Pathology. In addition to pediatrics researchers, the study also involved scientists at the Lifespan Center for International Health Research, Harvard Medical School in Boston, and Linkoping University and Helsingborg Hospital in Sweden.

Source: David Orenstein
Brown University