Abstract

Introduction: Maternal metabolism changes substantially during pregnancy. However, few studies have used metabolomics technologies to characterize changes across gestation.

Objectives and methods: We applied liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) based non-targeted metabolomics to determine whether the metabolic profile of serum differs throughout the pregnancy between pre-eclamptic and healthy women in the FINNPEC (Finnish Genetics of Preeclampsia Consortium) Study. Serum samples were available from early and late pregnancy.

Results: Progression of pregnancy had large-scale effects to the serum metabolite profile. Altogether 50 identified metabolites increased and 49 metabolites decreased when samples of early pregnancy were compared to samples of late pregnancy. The metabolic signatures of pregnancy were largely shared in pre-eclamptic and healthy women, only urea, monoacylglyceride 18:1 and glycerophosphocholine were identified to be increased in the pre-eclamptic women when compared to healthy controls.

Conclusions: Our study highlights the need of large-scale longitudinal metabolomic studies in non-complicated pregnancies before more detailed understanding of metabolism in adverse outcomes could be provided. Our findings are one of the first steps for a broader metabolic understanding of the physiological changes caused by pregnancy per se.

Collaborators for The FINNPEC Core Investigator Group

Eero Kajantie (Chronic Disease Prevention Unit, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland; Children’s Hospital, Helsinki University Hospital and University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; PEDEGO Research Unit, MRC Oulu, Oulu University Hospital and University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland). Juha Kere (Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, and Science for Life Laboratory, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; Molecular Neurology Research Program, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; Folkhälsan Institute of Genetics, Helsinki, Finland), Katja Kivinen (Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), Helsinki Institute of Life Science, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland), Anneli Pouta (Department of Government Services, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland).