ABOVE: RNA transcripts circulating in a mother’s blood provide information about maternal, fetal, and placental health and might one day be used to diagnose preeclampsia.
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The paper
S. Munchel et al., “Circulating transcripts in maternal blood reflect a molecular signature of early-onset preeclampsia,” Sci Transl Med, 12:eaaz0131, 2020.
Preeclampsia, a potentially fatal complication that affects roughly 5 percent of pregnancies worldwide, can only be diagnosed after the onset of symptoms such as high blood pressure, so treatment is always reactive. “The next really big need is better methods to diagnose or predict risk of pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia,” says Fiona Kaper, a senior director of scientific research at the biotech company Illumina.
To identify possible biomarkers of the condition, Kaper and her colleagues drew blood from 40 pregnant women with early-onset severe preeclampsia and 73 unaffected expecting mothers. Circulating in the blood of each mom-to-be is ...
