INTRODUCTION Pre-eclampsia is a hypertensive gestational disorder that affects approximately 5% of all pregnancies. OBJECTIVES As the pathophysiological processes of pre-eclampsia are still uncertain, the present case-control study explored underlying metabolic processes characterising this disease. METHODS 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. RESULTS 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. CONCLUSIONS The putatively identified compounds provide sources for novel hypotheses to help understanding of the underlying biochemical pathology of pre-eclampsia.

中文翻译：

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子痫前期妇女血浆样品的无目标分析显示了代谢组中的极性和非极性变化。

引言先兆子痫是一种高血压的妊娠疾病，约占所有妊娠的5％。目的由于先兆子痫的病理生理过程仍不确定，本病例对照研究探索了表征该病的潜在代谢过程。方法在孕中期从先兆子痫（n = 32）和健康孕妇（n = 35）中收集孕妇外周血浆样本。提取后，基于高分辨率质谱的非靶向代谢组学用于分析极性和非极性代谢物，并通过单变量和多变量统计方法分析所得数据。结果研究表明，子痫前期妇女的代谢组发生了实质性变化。在最具区别性的代谢产物中，有羟基己酸 二酰基甘油，甘油磷酸肌醇，烟酰胺腺嘌呤二核苷酸代谢产物，胆汁酸和氨基酸代谢产物。结论推定的化合物为新的假设提供了来源，以帮助理解先兆子痫的潜在生化病理。