Can Biofluids Metabolic Profiling Help to Improve Healthcare during Pregnancy?

Abstract

<jats:p>This paper describes a metabonomics study of 2nd trimester biofluids (amniotic fluid, maternal urine, and blood plasma), in an attempt to correlate biofluid metabolic changes with suspected/diagnosed fetal malformations (FM) and chromosomal disorders as well as with later occurring gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), preterm delivery (PTD), and premature rupture of membranes (PROM). The global biochemical picture given by the threesome of biofluids should enable the definition of potential disease signatures and unveil potential metabolite markers for clinical use in predictive prenatal diagnostics. Results show that relatively strong metabolic disturbances accompany FM, reflected in all three biofluids and thus suggesting the involvement of both fetal and maternal metabolisms. Regarding GDM, amniotic fluid and maternal urine seem potential good media to detect early metabolic changes, and PTD subjects show small metabolite changes in the same biofluids, undergoing work being focused on plasma composition. Chromosomal disorders show an interestingly marked effect on maternal urine, whereas no statistically relevant early changes have been observed for PROM subjects. Interestingly, in the case of FM and chromosomal disorders, maternal biofluids show some sensitivity to disorder type, for example, for central nervous system malformations and trisomy 21, respectively. These results show the usefulness of biofluid metabonomics to probe overall metabolic disturbances in relation to prenatal disorders.</jats:p>

1H NMR-based metabolomics reveals the effect of maternal habitual dietary patterns on human amniotic fluid profile

“…Nevertheless, the results of the current study have to be interpreted in the light of its strengths, concerning the experimental approaches undertaken. Firstly, the fact that in the present study we analysed AF after excluding samples from pregnancies that (i) were complicated by structural malformations and/or chromosomal abnormalities of the fetus, (ii) were characterised by obstetrical or medical disorders, or (iii) ended in delivering a small or large for gestational age infant, eliminated the potential overlapping with metabolic effects attributable to these aforementioned fetal/maternal disturbances 12 , 24 – 27 , 29 , 30 , 33 – 35 , 40 . Moreover, the parallel analyses of the three biological specimens (obtained at the time of genetic amniocentesis) provide complementary information of fetal metabolism, through AF analysis, and maternal metabolism, by the excretive and circulating characteristics of the mother.…”

Metabolomics Application in Maternal-Fetal Medicine

“…A recently published paper was entitled “Can biofluids metabolic profiling help us to improve health care during pregnancy?” [46]. The answer is “probably yes” if all these preliminary data on the potential usefulness of biofluids metabolomics in perinatal disorders are further investigated, single diseases are targeted and results are confirmed.…”

Human Milk Oligosaccharides modulate the risk for preterm birth in a microbiome dependent and independent manner

“…Comments on the patient recruitment and classification into groups of high and low risk for preterm birth Our study was originally designed to compare women with confirmed preterm labor (weeks [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] with gestational matched controls without contractions with regards to microbiome, HMOs and metabolites. We originally formed the groups of cases and controls (Fig.…”

“…S6). We also compared the metabolites acetate, trimethylamine and tyrosine, which have been previously associated with PTB [33,34], but found no significant differences between cases and controls (Suppl. Fig.…”