In the reported study we applied the targeted metabolomic profiling employing high pressure liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) to understand the pathophysiology of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), early identification of women who are at risk of developing GDM, and the differences in recovery postpartum between these women and normoglycemic women. We profiled the peripheral blood from patients during the second trimester of pregnancy and three months, and one year postpartum. In the GDM group Arg, Gln, His, Met, Phe and Ser were downregulated with statistical significance in comparison to normoglycemic (NGT) women. From the analysis of the association of all amino acid profiles of GDM and NGT women, several statistical models predicting diabetic status were formulated and compared with the literature, with the arginine-based model as the most promising of the screened ones (area under the curve (AUC) = 0.749). Our research results have shed light on the critical role of arginine in the development of GDM and may help in precisely distinguishing between GDM and NGT and earlier detection of GDM but also in predicting women with the increased type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) risk.
Keywords: GDM; T2DM risk; arginine; follow-up studies.