Pre-eclampsia was defined as elevated blood pressure as
described above, accompanied by proteinuria after 20 weeks
of pregnancy. Pregnancy-induced hypertension was defined
as elevated blood pressure in the absence of proteinuria [26,
27]. Patients with hypertension before 20 weeks of pregnancy were excluded from all analyses and the patients with
proteinuria during the first half of pregnancy (White’s class
F) were excluded from the analyses for nephropathy.
Importantly, 57 previous pregnancies from the period before
1988 were further assessed from the medical files in order to
detect any possible pre-eclamptic pregnancies prior to the
index pregnancy. Three new cases of pre-eclampsia were
detected but two of them were classified as White’s class F