A team at the University of Leeds has discovered a way of diagnosing pre-eclampsia, a condition which affects almost one in ten pregnant women and accounts for up to 15% of all premature deliveries. They now plan to develop a user-friendly diagnostic kit within five years which could be used in hospitals all over the world to safely and speedily test all pregnant women. The potential saving of a predictor for the NHS alone has been estimated at up to £500m a year with the reduction in medical care required for the mother and her baby.
