Extracellular exosomes and preeclampsia: a microarray-based study and functional enrichment analysis

Background:  Preeclampsia (PE) is a heterogeneous pregnancy disease which the exact pathophysiology of it is unknown. Recently exosomes have been indicated as a causative factor in the pathogenesis of PE. The aim of the study was to investigate in microarray library data to extract the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in PE and to perform a functional enrichment analysis to predict the role of DEGs in pathogenesis of PE. Materials and methods: GSE10588 microarray library data was analyzes by GEO2R and R package (version 4.1.0). Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to analyze the normality of the data. Annotation analysis was performed by Enrichr, DAVID 6.8 and PANTHER 16. Results: Microarray data analysis showed that LEP, OR8G2 and DST genes had the highest expression and PTCH1 and ZNF598 genes had the lowest expression in placenta of preeclamtic women. Cellular component analysis showed that most of the extracted genes are related to extracellular exosome. In addition, response to hypoxia, cell-cell adhesion, brain development and galactose metabolism are the pathways that enriched. Conclusion: Extracellular exosome, response to hypoxia and galactose metabolism need more attention and investigation in PE.