LEP and HELLP syndrome: Examination of PE in placenta studies identified 16 genes that were present in 4 or more studies including LEP, a fat-regulating hormone commonly shown to be differentially expressed in gestational tissues of women with PE and HELLP Syndrome, and FLT1, a growth factor known to be highly expressed in preeclamptic placental trophoblast cells [21, 32, 44, 48, 53, 75, 80, 88, 94].