Background: Pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH) is associated with an increased number of neonatal complications, but its impact on neonatal metabolism remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the differential metabolomics of infants born to mothers with and without PIH.
Methods: Blood samples of a total of 115 infants born to mothers with (n=56) and without (n=59) PIH were collected and assigned to two groups, respectively, from the neonatal department of Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University. A tandem mass spectrometer was used to generate metabolic profiling of amino acid, free carnitine, and acyl-carnitines. The resulting data were analyzed using orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis based on the difference between infants born to mothers with or without PIH.
Results: A significant relationship was observed between the two groups (with and without PIH) in the metabolic fingerprint. According to the pattern recognition analysis combined with variance importance, 25 metabolites with high importance were found. The top ten substances were selected for analysis. Compared with infants born to mothers without PIH, glycine levels increased, and C14DC, C22, C4DC, C5:1, C6DC, C5-OH, proline, C14-OH, and C20 decreased in infants born to mothers with PIH.
Conclusions: Using liquid chromatography (LC)-MS/MS metabolomics, a significant relationship was detected between neonatal metabolism and maternal hypertension. It is important to correct the subsequent infantile metabolic disorder by balancing the biomarker metabolites and suppling adequate nutrition to improve the health and growth of newborns of PIH mothers.
Keywords: Pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH); metabolomics; neonatal metabolism; nutrition; tandem mass spectrometer.
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