A nested case-control study of circular ribonucleic acid expression profiles in the peripheral blood of pregnant women with pre-eclampsia.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the expression of circular ribonucleic acid (circRNA) in the peripheral blood of pregnant women with preeclampsia (PE) prior to the onset of the disease.

METHOD

A prospective nested case-control study included pregnant women who delivered at Fujian Maternal and Child Health Hospitals between November 2021 and October 2022. The study included three women diagnosed with PE (the PE group) and three healthy pregnant women (the control group). The expression of circRNAs in the peripheral blood before clinical diagnosis at 20 weeks gestation was analyzed by microarray technology, and the functional analysis and regulatory network prediction were done.

RESULT

There were 162 circRNAs with differentially expressed multiplicity of > 2.0 in the PE group compared to the control group. Out of them, 30 circRNAs were up-regulated and 132 were down-regulated. Gene ontology (GO) analysis revealed that the host genes of the differentially expressed circRNAs mainly participated in protein localization to plasma membrane, insemination, etc. Most enriched terms were related to cytoplasmic dynein complex, microtubule cytoskeleton, etc. In terms of molecular function, the enriched terms were related to dynein light intermediate chain binding, polyubiquitin modification-dependent protein binding, etc. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) signaling pathway enrichment analysis revealed that differentially expressed circRNAs were involved in vasopressin-regulated water reabsorption, cyclic guanosine monophosphate-protein kinase G (cGMP-PKG), calcium- and other signaling pathways.

CONCLUSION

CircRNAs are involved in a variety of biological processes and regulatory network related to the pathogenesis of PE.