Untargeted analysis of plasma samples from pre-eclamptic women reveals polar and apolar changes in the metabolome

Pre-eclampsia is a hypertensive gestational disorder that affects approximately 5% of all pregnancies.

As the pathophysiological processes of pre-eclampsia are still uncertain, the present case-control study explored underlying metabolic processes characterising this disease.

Maternal peripheral plasma samples were collected from pre-eclamptic (n = 32) and healthy pregnant women (n = 35) in the third trimester. After extraction, high-resolution mass spectrometry-based untargeted metabolomics was used to profile polar and apolar metabolites and the resulting data were analysed via uni- and multivariate statistical approaches.

The study demonstrated that the metabolome undergoes substantial changes in pre-eclamptic women. Amongst the most discriminative metabolites were hydroxyhexacosanoic acid, diacylglycerols, glycerophosphoinositols, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide metabolites, bile acids and products of amino acid metabolism.

The putatively identified compounds provide sources for novel hypotheses to help understanding of the underlying biochemical pathology of pre-eclampsia.