Abstract: Preeclampsia is a serve obstetric complication, which not only affects maternal health, but also influences the long-term prognosis of  their offspring. The etiology and pathogenesis have not been fully understood. Preeclampsia is a placenta source disease, its development can be divided into two stages. The first stage for the forming process of pathophysiological changes which is characterized with abnormal extravillous trophoblast invasion, impaired spiral artery remodeling and reduced placental perfusion. The second stage for organ damage which cause a variety of clinical manifestations. Apoptosis of villous trophoblast plays an important role on the pathogenesis of preeclampsia, apoptosis imbalance can lead to the abnormal invasion ability. At different stage of the disease, apoptosis mechanism of the villous trophoblast is also different. Summarizes the literature found that first stage maily for the decidual killer cells induce excessive extravillous trophoblast apoptosis which causes impaired spiral artery remodeling, the second stage of the abnormal structure of spiral arteries which causes ischemia and hypoxia of placenta resulted in excessive syncytiotrophoblast apoptosis. But the related mechanism needs further research.

Key words: Pre-eclampsia, Trophoblasts, Placenta, Apoptosis；, Killer cells, natural, Decidual NK cell