Relationship between amniotic fluid metabolic profile with fetal gender, maternal age, and gestational week

Abstract

Background Amniotic fluid (AF) provides vital information on fetal development, which is also valuable in identifying fetal abnormalities during pregnancy. However, the relationship between the metabolic profile of AF in the second trimester of a normal pregnancy with several maternal–fetal parameters remains poorly understood, which therefore limits its application in clinical practice. The aim of this study was to explore the association between the metabolic profile of AF with fetal gender, maternal age, and gestational week using an untargeted metabolomics method. Methods A total of 114 AF samples were analyzed in this study. Clinical data on fetal gender, maternal age, and gestational week of these samples were collected. Samples were analyzed by gas chromatography/time-of-flight-mass spectrometry (GC-TOF/MS). Principal component analysis(PCA), orthogonal partial least square discrimination analysis(OPLS-DA) or partial least square discrimination analysis (PLS-DA) were conducted to compare metabolic profiles, and differential metabolites were obtained by univariate analysis. Results Both PCA and OPLS-DA demonstrated no significant separation trend between the metabolic profiles of male and female fetuses, and there were only 7 differential metabolites. When the association between the maternal age on AF metabolic profile was explored, both PCA and PLS-DA revealed that the maternal age in the range of 21 to 40 years had no significant effect on the metabolic profile of AF, and only four different metabolites were found. There was no significant difference in the metabolic profiles of AF from fetuses of 17–22 weeks, and 23 differential metabolites were found. Conclusions In the scope of our study, there was no significant correlation between the AF metabolic profile and the fetal gender, maternal age and gestational week of a small range. Nevertheless, few metabolites appeared differentially expressed.

Maternal Dietary Protein Patterns and Neonatal Anthropometrics: A Prospective Study with Insights from NMR Metabolomics in Amniotic Fluid

“…Based on the existing data from metabolomics studies conducted on non-pregnant populations, dietary habits may be considered a direct source of metabolites for biospecimens such as plasma, serum, or urine [ 66 , 67 ]. However, exploring the potential metabolic signatures of maternal DPPs on AF is rather a challenging task due to the multifactorial nature of human metabolism and the complex metabolic changes occurring during this period of life [ 32 ]. During pregnancy, and especially in the second trimester, there is a range of routes that confer metabolites to the AF pool including maternal diet, metabolite synthesis, and degradation pathways [ 31 ].…”

“…Specifically, the implementation of metabolomics in various biological matrixes is an efficient tool for exploring the effects of perinatal nutrition on pregnancy evolution and outcome [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ]. In this context, amniotic fluid (AF) is considered a pertinent study material since it is a vital source of nutrients for fetal growth and its metabolic signature “recapitulates” several biological processes such as maternal and fetal metabolism as well as their bidirectional metabolic communication [ 31 , 32 ].…”