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

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. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11306-019-1600-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.