Blood Plasma Lipidome: Opportunities in the Early Diagnostics of Preeclampsia

Blood plasma lipidome analysis is a mass spectrometric (MS) evaluation of molecular types of lipids, sometimes in combination with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Its importance is increasing in studies aimed at identifying new informative biomarkers of diseases. The review summarizes the studies of the application of this approach to preeclampsia (PE), which is a not so rare (nearly 5%) pregnancy abnormality that often results in maternal and fetal mortality. The absence of both timely detectable biomarkers and a clear understanding of its pathogenesis determines the active research in this area. The results of lipidomic studies of PE patients, in which the differences in the levels of individual molecular types of lipids were detected, are presented here. Various studies have described the increased levels of various lipids in PE plasma: a few ceramides types and several individual phospholipids (phosphatidylglycerols, oxidized phosphatidylcholine, lysophosphatidylcholine with C14:0). Two independent studies of PE plasma have shown an increase in phosphatidylserine and diglycerides, as well as sphingosine phosphate. Differences in the dynamics of change of sphingomyeline level are reported, particularly with C16:0 that was decreased in the first pregnancy trimester and subsequently increased in PE patients only. The development of standard conditions for MS analysis, such as sample preparation, ionization conditions, and ion detection modes, will, in combination with other metabolomics approaches, provide additional information on the PE pathogenesis, and probably identify new informative biomarkers.