I read one of EmpowHer's leading news stories on a recent study out of Yale on preeclampsia and the effect of dark chocolate. I must say I'm a little skeptical about the study.

I nearly died from preeclampsia, also called toxemia, during my first pregnancy with twins. I suffered from liver failure and near kidney failure before I had to have an emergency C-section at 28 weeks. Preeclampsia has multiple complications besides high blood pressure. At the time I did some research to figure out why I had preeclampsia and what my chances were to get it again during a subsequent pregnancy. By asking around some of the top doctors in Dallas, where I lived at the time, I learned that preeclampsia is caused by the man, and if you have subsequent pregnancies with the same partner, you most likely won't get it again because your body has developed an immunity to it. I had two more pregnancies and never had a problem with preeclampsia, so I assumed this was probably good info.

Anyway, I can imagine chocolate being good as a relaxant, but can't imagine it preventing all the awful things that happen with preeclampsia. I wish someone would do a really good study on the cause of preeclampsia, and if it is caused by the sperm, how to test to know if you are at risk for it.

Has anyone here had preeclampsia or know of any other studies on it?

Here's part of the article below:

Chocolate, especially dark chocolate, is rich in a chemical called theobromine, which stimulates the heart, relaxes smooth muscle and dilates blood vessels, and has been used to treat chest pain, high blood pressure, and hardening of the arteries, Dr. Elizabeth W. Triche of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and colleagues write.

Preeclampsia, in which blood pressure spikes during pregnancy while excess protein is released into the urine, has many features in common with heart disease, the researchers add. To investigate whether chocolate's possible cardiovascular benefits also might help prevent preeclampsia, the researchers looked at 2,291 women who delivered a single infant, and asked them about how much chocolate they consumed in their first and third trimesters. The researchers also tested levels of theobromine in infants' umbilical cord blood.

Women who consumed the most chocolate and those whose infants had the highest concentration of theobromine in their cord blood were the least likely to develop preeclampsia. Women in the highest quarter for cord blood theobromine were 69 percent less likely to develop the complication than those in the lowest quarter.