Andrée Gruslin award lecture: Metabolomics as an important modality to better understand preeclampsia

Preeclampsia (PE) is a complex disorder that affects 3-5% of all pregnancies and is a leading cause of maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. To date, the heterogeneity of clinical presentation, disease severity and outcomes have limited significant advances in early prediction, diagnosis, and therapeutic intervention of PE. The rapidly expanding field of metabolomics, which has the capacity to quantitatively detect low molecular weight compounds (metabolites) in tissue and biological fluids, shows tremendous promise in gaining a better understanding of PE. This review will discuss this emerging field and its contribution to recent advances in the understanding of PE pathophysiology, and identification of early predictive metabolic biomarkers for this complex disorder.