Abstract:

Preeclampsia is a multi-system hypertensive disorder in pregnancy with high morbidity and rapid progress. According to the statistics, preeclampsia causes more than 70 000 maternal deaths and 500 000 fetal deaths in the world annually, imposing a serious burden to the global health care system. However, the pathogenesis of preeclampsia is still unclear. It is generally believed that the development of preeclampsia is related to abnormal uterine-placental vascular remodeling caused by insufficient invasion of placental trophoblast cells and activation of maternal systemic inflammatory response. Numerous studies have demonstrated that placenta ischemia and hypoxia, oxidative stress, angiogenesis and function imbalance, immune disorder, inflammation, maternal cardiovascular dysfunction are important components of the pathogenesis of preeclampsia. This review introduces the research progress on the pathogenesis of preeclampsia from these aspects in an effort to understand the occurrence and development of preeclampsia, provide help for early diagnosis and intervention, and improve the maternal and fetal outcomes.

Key words: Pre-eclampsia, Inflammation, Placenta, Vascular remodeling, Pathogenesis