Objective To identify peptides in maternal serum which predict the onset of severe early onset pre-eclampsia (PE) (requiring delivery before 33 weeks) before the onset of signs or symptoms.

Study Design Samples were taken from women at 11–13 weeks who did (n=20) or did not (n=20) subsequently develop PE which required delivery before 34-week gestation Samples (in triplicate) from individual women were immunodepleted to remove the highly abundant proteins, using an IgY-14 trapping column. Proteins were separated by Reversed Phase chromatography or 2D RP/RP-LC-MS. The raw data files produced were processed using ProteinLynx. Peptides must have been observed in at least two of the three technical replicate analyses to be included in the list of proteins identified from the analyses.

Results A unique protein or peptide was classified as such if it was present in only one sample at a sufficient quantity. In our initial study the authors found on 24 peptides unique in PE samples. From these, there were 3–4 peptides of significant concentration. There were 18 peptides unique to the the normal plasma. In addition to this the authors have found marked increase in pro-inflammatory proteins when comparing PE samples to non-PE ones.

Conclusion The Proteome in plasma of women who will develop PE are different to those that do not, even in the first trimester. Characterisation of these compounds should enable the development of a screening test in the first trimester for prediction of PE.