Protein in urine may warn of preeclampsia risk in pregnant women

Preeclampsia, or toxemia, develops during pregnancy. In severe cases, it can rapidly escalate to eclampsia, a condition in which the mother suffers a series of potentially fatal complications.

Ananth Karumanchi, MD, a nephrologist in the Department of Medicine at BIDMC and assistant professor of medicine, obstetrics and gynecology at Harvard Medical School, explains that while in a healthy pregnancy, the mother's blood vessels widen to nourish the fetus, the blood vessels narrow in preeclamptic women. "Our discovery suggested this was happening because the anti-angiogenic protein sFlt1 was attaching to and absorbing two pro-angiogenic proteins, PIGF and VEGF."

full story »