Placenta-derived exosomes as early biomarker of preeclampsia - Potential role of exosomal miRNAs across gestation.. Homo sapiens

Preeclampsia (PE) and its related diseases is one of the most significant pregnancy complications, occurring at an incidence of 3-5% and is responsible for nearly 40% of premature births delivered before 35 weeks. There is a need to develop strategies for early prediction of patients who will develop PE, in order to establish preventive strategies to reduce the prevalence and severity of the disease and their associated aftereffects. Therefore, a prospective cohort of patients were recruited at three time points during pregnancy for each patient (i.e. 11-14 (early gestational age), 22-24 (middle gestational age) and 32-36 (late gestational age) weeks gestation). A retrospective stratified study design was used to characterize miRNAs in exosomes derived from maternal plasma of normal (n=32 per time point) and PE (n=15 per time point) pregnancies. Overall design: miRNAs were profiled from exosomes using next generation seqeuencing, utilizing the Illumina NextSeq 500 platform