Metabolomics study on the newborns of pregnant women with gestational diabetes

Objective To investigate the metabolic changes of umbilical cord blood in pregnant women with gestational diabetes mellitus(GDM) compared with pregnant women with normal glucose tolerance, and to analyze the effect of GDM on neonatal metabolism. Methods Pregnant women in the first trimester were recruited in the cohort study in Taicang District, Jiangsu Province from 2014 to 2016. Oral glucose tolerance test was used to diagnose GDM, at 24-28 weeks of gestation. Pregnant women with GDM were taken as the case group and normal pregnant women as the control group. Five mL of umbilical cord blood was collected from full-term newborns, and non-target metabolites in serum samples were detected by ultra high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The t test, principal component analysis and orthogonal partial least square analysis were used to analyze the difference of metabolites in umbilical cord blood between the two groups. The metabolic pathways involved in the markers were analyzed according to P& lt; 0. 05 and variable importance projection(VIP)& gt; 1. 0. The metabolic pathways involved in the markers were analyzed based on the KEGG database. Results According to the result of GDM diagnosis, 42 pregnant women with GDM and 39 control pregnant women were included. A total of 868 small molecular metabolites were detected in umbilical cord blood samples. The concentrations of 41 metabolites were different between groups(P& lt; 0. 05 and VIP& gt; 1. 0), including 18 kinds of amino acid metabolites, 9 kinds of lipid metabolites, 5 kinds of exogenous compounds, 4 kinds of nucleotide metabolites, 3 kinds of peptides, 1 kind of vitamin(pantothenic acid) and 1 kind of coenzyme(gulonic acid). γ-glutamylalanine in the GDM group was lower than that in the control group(P& lt; 0. 01), and other compounds in the GDM group were higher than those in the control group(P& lt; 0. 05). Combined with pathway analysis, the above metabolites are mainly involved in lysine degradation pathway and aminoacyl tRNA biosynthesis pathway. Conclusion Compared with the newborns of pregnant women with normal blood glucose, the metabolites in cord serum from full-term newborns of pregnant women with GDM are mainly characterized by the increase of some amino acids and lipid metabolites.