Circulating RNA (C-RNA) is continually released into the bloodstream from tissues throughout the body, offering an opportunity to noninvasively monitor all aspects of pregnancy health from conception to birth. We asked whether C-RNA analysis could robustly detect aberrations in patients diagnosed with preeclampsia (PE), a prevalent and potentially fatal pregnancy complication. As an initial examination, we sequenced the circulating transcriptome from 40 pregnancies at the time of severe, early-onset PE diagnosis and 73 gestational age–matched controls. Differential expression analysis identified 30 transcripts with gene ontology annotations and tissue expression patterns consistent with the placental dysfunction, impaired fetal development, and maternal immune and cardiovascular system dysregulation characteristic of PE. Furthermore, machine learning identified combinations of 49 C-RNA transcripts that classified an independent cohort of patients (early-onset PE, n = 12; control, n = 12) with 85 to 89% accuracy. C-RNA may thus hold promise for improving the diagnosis and identification of at-risk pregnancies.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.