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Association of altered serum acylcarnitine levels in early pregnancy and risk of gestational diabetes mellitus

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Abstract

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a high-prevalence disease and diagnosed in middle pregnancy. Acylcarnitines are a series of fatty acid esters of carnitine and play important roles in fatty acid and carbohydrate metabolism. However, the role of acylcarnitine on the development of GDM remains unclear. This case-control study involving 214 study participants (107 GDM cases and 107 matched controls) was conducted in a cohort, in China, from 2013 to 2015. The levels of carnitine and 36 acylcarnitines in serum samples collected at the early stage of pregnancy were determined by using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. The associations of the levels of the 37 targeted compounds with GDM risk were investigated by using binary conditional logistic regression models. Alterations in acylcarnitine levels were observed 9–17 weeks before GDM diagnosis. The increases in levels of propionyl-carnitine, malonyl-carnitine, isovaleryl-carnitine, palmitoyl-carnitine and linoleoyl-carnitine were associated with GDM risk with odds ratios (ORs) per standard deviation (SD) increment greater than 1 (p<0.05), after adjustment for potential confounding factors (pre-pregnancy body mass index and parity). On the contrary, the increases of decanoyl-carnitine, decenoyl-carnitine, tetradecenoyl-carnitine, tetradecandienoyl-carnitine levels were associated with the reduced risk for GDM (ORs per SD <1, p<0.05). To our knowledge, the present study is the largest case-control study to investigate the association between early-pregnancy acylcarnitine levels in serum and GDM risk. The findings add to the evidence for the association between acylcarnitine levels and GDM risk.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all the participants in this study and Prof. Shau-Ku Huang at Shenzhen University for his valuable comments and suggestions. Dr. Simon Wang at the Language Centre of HKBU has improved the linguistic presentation of the manuscript. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21437002) and the General Research Fund (12319716) from Research Grants Council of Hong Kong.

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Environmental and Biological Analysis, Department of Chemistry, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China

    Hongzhi Zhao, Yuanyuan Zheng, Lin Zhu, Jing Fang, Li Xiang, Yanqiu Zhou, Hemi Luan & Zongwei Cai

  2. Key Laboratory of Environment and Health, Ministry of Education & Ministry of Environmental Protection, State Key Laboratory of Environmental Health (Incubation), School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Han Li, Shunqing Xu & Wei Xia

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  1. Hongzhi Zhao
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  2. Han Li
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Correspondence to Wei Xia or Zongwei Cai.

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Zhao, H., Li, H., Zheng, Y. et al. Association of altered serum acylcarnitine levels in early pregnancy and risk of gestational diabetes mellitus. Sci. China Chem. 63, 126–134 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-019-9580-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-019-9580-2

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