Protein Misfolding during Pregnancy: New Approaches to Preeclampsia Diagnostics

Preeclampsia (PE) is a multisystem heterogeneous complication of pregnancy remaining a leading cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality over the world. PE has a large spectrum of clinical features and symptoms, which make diagnosis challenging. Despite a long period of studying, PE etiology is still unclear and there are no reliable rapid tests for early diagnosis of this disease. During the last decade, it was shown that proteins misfolding and aggregation are associated with PE. Several proteins, including amyloid beta peptide, transthyretin, alpha-1 antitrypsin, albumin, IgG k-free light chains, and ceruloplasmin are dysregulated in PE, resulting in toxic deposition of amyloid-like aggregates in the placenta and body fluids. It is also possible that aggregated proteins induce defective trophoblast invasion, placental ischemia, ER stress, and promote PE manifestation. The fact that protein aggregation is an emerging biomarker of PE provides an opportunity to develop new diagnostic approaches based on amyloids special features, such as Congo red (CR) staining and thioflavin T (ThT) enhanced fluorescence.