On Monday, a crew of researchers revealed that it could become easy to detect the complications of pre-eclampsia weeks in pregnant women, before its symptoms start erupting.

Philip Baker of the University of Alberta in Canada, the study’s lead author stated that they discovered that in pregnant women who suffered from pre-eclampsia weeks, the sequence of 45 distinct compounds associated with the human metabolism were different, which could help in predicting the condition.

Baker added that by identifying the women, who were at more risk to the condition; the maternal death rates in undeveloped countries can be brought down to the threshold of developed nations, and could thus, save a number of lives.

Pre-eclampsia is generally experienced by women with high blood pressure and high protein levels in urine and there is no test to examine the same, at present. Even if the mother and the infant survive the condition, there is a greater risk that the women can develop high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and diabetes, later on. In such a case, there are premature births and babies suffer from certain problems all through their life.

The findings of the study were published in the journal Hypertension. The study involved the blood testing of 120 women; of these 60 had developed pre-eclampsia later in pregnancy and 60 were normal cases. The test was conducted for around 15 weeks.