a method for determining the risk of a mother of a fetus to develop preeclampsia during pregnancy comprising : providing a sample of genomic dna from an individual related to the fetus ; analyzing the dna for the presence of one or more mutations in the pp13 gene ; and determining the risk of the mother on the basis of the presence of the mutations . also disclosed are mutated pp13 protein variants , and a kit for use in the method of the invention comprising dna probes for specific genomic sequences of the pp13 native gene and / or mutated sequences thereof .