The genes of fathers and mothers appear to play a role in pre-eclampsia, a dangerous and sometimes deadly pregnancy complication that is on the rise among American women, a study found.
The finding may eventually help doctors understand the mysterious condition and find ways to treat and prevent it, researchers at University of Utah School of Medicine said.
They found that women whose own births were complicated by pre-eclampsia were three times more likely to develop the condition when they became pregnant. That confirmed earlier findings that mothers could pass an increased risk to daughters.
But the researchers also showed for the first time that men whose births were complicated by pre-eclampsia were twice as likely to have offspring born of such pregnancies.
The research was reported in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
The researchers combed Utah's extensive medical and genealogical records and studied thousands of births since 1947.
Pre-eclampsia, in which blood pressure rises suddenly late in pregnancy, affects only about 5 percent of pregnancies, but the rate rose by nearly a third in the 1990s, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Often the problem is controlled by putting the mother on bed rest and a low-salt diet, but sometimes doctors must induce delivery to prevent the woman from going into seizures and to save mother and child.
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