IntroductionPre-eclampsia is a hypertensive gestational disorder that affects approximately 5% of all pregnancies.ObjectivesAs the pathophysiological processes of pre-eclampsia are still uncertain, the present case–control study explored underlying metabolic processes characterising this disease.MethodsMaternal 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.ResultsThe 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.ConclusionsThe putatively identified compounds provide sources for novel hypotheses to help understanding of the underlying biochemical pathology of pre-eclampsia.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s11306-019-1600-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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IntroductionThe function of the placental vasculature differs considerably from other systemic vascular beds of the human body. A detailed understanding of the normal placental vascular physiology is the foundation to understand perturbed conditions potentially leading to placental dysfunction. MethodsBehaviour of human stem villous arteries isolated from placentae at term pregnancy was assessed using wire myography. Effects of a selection of known vasoconstrictors and vasodilators of the systemic vasculature were assessed. The morphology of stem villous arteries was examined using IHC and TEM. ResultsContractile effects in stem villous arteries were caused by U46619, 5-HT, angiotensin II and endothelin-1 (p ≤ 0.05), whereas noradrenaline and AVP failed to result in a contraction. Dilating effects were seen for histamine, riluzole, nifedipine, papaverine, SNP and SQ29548 (p ≤ 0.05) but not for acetylcholine, bradykinin and substance P. DiscussionStem villous arteries behave differently to vessels of the systemic vasculature and results indicate that the placenta is cut off from the systemic maternal vascular regulation. Particularly, endothelium-dependent processes were attenuated in the placental vasculature, creating a need to determine the role of the endothelium in the placenta in future studies.