A novel cuproptosis-related prognostic gene profiles in preeclampsia

Background: Preeclampsia (PE) is one of the main causes of poor maternal and fetal outcomes, whose pathogenesis is complex and remains unclear. Cuproptosis is a novel identified form of programmed cell death. However, the link between cuproptosis and clinical outcome in PE is still less known. Methods: Using RNA sequencing data in GEO database, we conducted functional enrichment analysis of GO, KEGG and GSEA, supported by linear regression model and ROC curve analysis, and summarized the role of cuproptosis related genes in preeclampsia. Results: 2831 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) related to PE were primarily summarized through multiple database analysis. Further intersected with 19 reported cuproptosis related genes (CRGs), and 5 CRGs were considered to be related to the pathogenesis of PE, including "NFE2L2", "PDHA1", "PDHB", "DLD", "GLS". Functional enrichment analysis of DEGs, CRGs and hub genes revealed identified "NFE2L2" as a key central gene. Pearson correlation analysis was used to analyze and showed that CRGs could be related to several maternal and fetal outcome factors, including the highest pregnancy blood pressure, placenta weight, umbilical blood flow PI, and neonatal weight. Linear regression equation revealed that the expression of "NFE2L2" was negatively correlated with the highest pregnancy blood pressure and umbilical blood flow PI but positively correlated with placental weight and neonatal weight. Further utilize of qPCR showed that the expression of these CRGs were significantly lower in placental tissues. Conclusions: The cuproptosis pattern evaluated in our study may be used as potential prognostic factors in patients with PE and could provide new insights into disease progression.