The condition is caused by elevated blood pressure during pregnancy and is responsible for the deaths of 1,000 babies in Britain every year, but the breakthrough has led the scientists to hope that they will soon be able to create an early diagnostic test for the condition.
Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers from Harvard Medical School said that women with pre-eclampsia have low levels of a protein called COMT, which is involved in the creation of new blood cells and a certain protein (2-ME).
Dr Raghu Kalluri, lead author of the study, explained that low levels of 2-ME can lead to a number of serious symptoms during pregnancy, including convulsions, kidney failure and liver problems.
"Interestingly, the many diverse factors that have been identified in the recent years as elevated or suppressed in women with pre-eclampsia are fixed by 2-ME, suggesting that this action of COMT is central to proper vascular function in the placenta," he added.
Pre-eclampsia affects approximately five per cent of all pregnancies world wide and is responsible for 15 per cent of premature deliveries in the UK.
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