At the same time, Sharma says that this does not explain exactly why the condition begins in the first place. While doctors still rely heavily on clinical risk factors such as age, ethnicity and medical history to assess who might develop pre-eclampsia, the accuracy of predictions based on these factors is notoriously poor. “The sensitivity of clinical risk factors on their own is low,” says Sharma.

But with newer and improved diagnostics beginning to emerge, scientists may soon be able to shed more light on who is at risk and why.

Predicting pre-eclampsia

While specialists treating other diseases such as cancer or chronic infections can often take a biopsy of a patient’s internal tissues for further analysis, there is no easy way of studying the changes taking place in a pregnant woman’s uterus.

“We can’t just routinely go in and collect a sample of placenta [from a pregnant woman], because that can really increase the risk of miscarriage,” says Lana McClements, associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney. “And animals actually don’t develop pre-eclampsia, so rodent models, for example, are very difficult to create.”