Cord Blood Lysophosphatidylcholine 16: 1 is Positively Associated with Birth Weight

Abstract

Background/Aims: Impaired birth outcomes, like low birth weight, have consistently been associated with increased disease susceptibility to hypertension in later life. Alterations in the maternal or fetal metabolism might impact on fetal growth and influence birth outcomes. Discerning associations between the maternal and fetal metabolome and surrogate parameters of fetal growth could give new insight into the complex relationship between intrauterine conditions, birth outcomes, and later life disease susceptibility. Methods: Using flow injection tandem mass spectrometry, targeted metabolomics was performed in serum samples obtained from 226 mother/child pairs at delivery. Associations between neonatal birth weight and concentrations of 163 maternal and fetal metabolites were analyzed. Results: After FDR adjustment using the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure lysophosphatidylcholines (LPC) 14: 0, 16: 1, and 18: 1 were strongly positively correlated with birth weight. In a stepwise linear regression model corrected for established confounding factors of birth weight, LPC 16: 1 showed the strongest independent association with birth weight (CI: 93.63 - 168.94; P = 6.94×10^-11 ). The association with birth weight was stronger than classical confounding factors such as offspring sex (CI: -258.81- -61.32; P = 0.002) and maternal smoking during pregnancy (CI: -298.74 - -29.51; P = 0.017). Conclusions: After correction for multiple testing and adjustment for potential confounders, LPC 16: 1 showed a very strong and independent association with birth weight. The underlying molecular mechanisms linking fetal LPCs with birth weight need to be addressed in future studies.

Kisspeptin/GPR54 System: What Do We Know About Its Role in Human Reproduction?

“…These alterations should be considered in fetus development since intrauterine environment, preterm, epigenetic mechanisms and parental programing could participate of diseases development in later life [84], for example, intrauterine environmental factors are linked to the development of cardiovascular disease in later life [85] and alterations in maternal or fetal metabolism are associated with birth weight [86].…”

Paternal Programming of Liver Function and Lipid Profile Induced by a Paternal Pre-Conceptional Unhealthy Diet: Potential Association with Altered Gut Microbiome Composition

“…Suboptimal early life conditions that affect germ cells, the intrauterine environment or early postnatal conditions may be responsible for this. The concept connecting the impact of early life conditions on later life disease susceptibility is known as fetal programming or developmental origins of adult disease [1-3]. …”

Maternal Metabolomic Profile and Fetal Programming of Offspring Adiposity: Identification of Potentially Protective Lipid Metabolites

“…Interestingly, in our study the sum of 22:6 or 20:4 species of diacyl‐phosphatidylcholines (PCaa), the dominant species in PL, showed no associations with newborn %BF. While this seems to be in contrast with previous studies, we targeted newborn body composition , as opposed to birthweight, body composition, or body weight in later infancy or childhood, as reported in other studies, which allow only limited conclusions on influences of intrauterine development. For instance, a recent study reported no associations between maternal metabolites and infant birth weight after correction for multiple testing, but did identify three fetal (cord blood) LPC metabolites (14:0, 16:1, 18:0) to be positively correlated .…”

“…Our study has several strengths, including direct measurement of newborn adiposity by DXA scans, availability of detailed metabolic data at multiple gestational time points, and determination of molecular composition of specific lipid species. Most studies which focus on maternal metabolism and metabolites and its relation to offspring growth or body composition use birth weight or weight‐ and length‐based proxy measures of body composition later in life as an outcome . Association studies with child body composition or growth parameters obtained after the perinatal period (i.e., after 1 month postnatal) can only draw limited conclusions about influences of the intrauterine development, since postnatal conditions like infant feeding practices, occurrence of illnesses, medical treatments, etc.…”