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Hypertension

Testing for pre-eclampsia: paving the way to early diagnosis

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A new study reports that a single blood test can be used to rule out the development of pre-eclampsia in women in whom the syndrome is suspected. Early interventions for pre-eclampsia are not yet available, but this finding is likely to change the approach to diagnosis of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy.

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Figure 1: Role of sFlt1 and PlGF in the development of pre-eclampsia.

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Acknowledgements

T.B. is supported by the German Research Foundation (BE2212 and SFB829, SFB832, SFB635). He apologizes to those whose work could not be cited owing to space limitations.

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Correspondence to Thomas Benzing.

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T.B. has received speaker honoraria from Hexal, Novartis, Kaneka and Otsuka.

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Benzing, T. Testing for pre-eclampsia: paving the way to early diagnosis. Nat Rev Nephrol 12, 200–202 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneph.2016.21

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