Abstract
Blood pressure development plays a major role in both the etiology and prediction of gestational hypertensive disorders. Metabolomics might serve as a tool to identify underlying metabolic mechanisms in the etiology of hypertension in pregnancy and lead to the identification of novel metabolites useful for the prediction of gestational hypertensive disorders. In a population-based, prospective cohort study among 803 pregnant women, liquid chromatography—mass spectrometry was used to determine serum concentrations of amino-acids, non-esterified fatty acids, phospholipids and carnitines in early pregnancy. Blood pressure was measured in each trimester of pregnancy. Information on gestational hypertensive disorders was obtained from medical records. Higher individual metabolite concentrations of the diacyl-phosphatidylcholines and acyl-lysophosphatidylcholines group were associated with higher systolic blood pressure throughout pregnancy (Federal Discovery Rate (FDR)-adjusted p-values < 0.05). Higher concentrations of one non-esterified fatty acid were associated with higher diastolic blood pressure throughout pregnancy (FDR-adjusted p-value < 0.05). Using penalized regression, we identified 12 individual early-pregnancy amino-acids, non-esterified fatty acids, diacyl-phosphatidylcholines and acyl-carnitines and the glutamine/glutamic acid ratio, that were jointly associated with larger changes in systolic and diastolic blood pressure from first to third trimester. These metabolites did not improve the prediction of gestational hypertensive disorders in addition to clinical markers. In conclusion, altered early pregnancy serum metabolite profiles mainly characterized by changes in non-esterified fatty acids and phospholipids metabolites are associated with higher gestational blood pressure throughout pregnancy within the physiological ranges. These findings are important from an etiological perspective and, after further replication, might improve the early identification of women at increased risk of gestational hypertensive disorders.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1169 |
| Journal | Metabolites |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 12 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The Generation R Study is financially supported by the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development. VWVJ received a grant from the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (NWO, ZonMw-VIDI 016.136.361) and a European Research Council Consolidator Grant (ERC-2014-CoG-648916). RG received funding from the Dutch Heart Foundation (grant number 2017T013), the Dutch Diabetes Foundation (grant number 2017.81.002) and the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMW, grant number 543003109). This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the ERA-NET Cofund action (no 727565), European Joint Programming Initiative “A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life” (JPI HDHL, EndObesity). Furthermore, this work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 874583 (ATHLETE Project).
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© 2022 by the authors.
