Abstract

To investigate gender differences, if any, in leptin concentrations from umbilical cord blood of new born infants of mothers with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM), gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), and Non diabetic (ND) at delivery. Serum leptin concentrations were measured in 105 newborns (53 males and 52 females in the three groups). Blood was taken from the umbilical cord of the babies at delivery. Maternal anthropometric measurements were recorded within 48 hours after delivery. Pearson correlation coefficient was used to explore the relationship between serum leptin concentrations and anthropometric measures of the fetus and their mother. Both Serum leptin level and serum C-peptide was measured by chemiluminescence based ELISA. The median range of leptin concentration in cord blood was ND group: Male [13.91 (3.22 – 47.63)], Female [16.88 (2 – 43.65)]; GDM group: Male [32 (7 – 76.00)], Female [36.73 (4.80 – 81.20)]; DM group: Male [20.90 (2 –76.00)], Female [32 {2.58 – 80.67)]. Cord serum leptin levels correlated with birth weight(r=0.587, p=0.0001), ponderal index (PI) (r=.319, p=0.024)of the babies and body mass index (BMI) (r=−0.299, p=0.035) of their mothers but did not correlate with gestational age, cord serum C-peptide concentration or placental weight at delivery. Leptin concentrations were higher in the female fetus in comparison to the male fetus. Birth weight of the female fetuses were also higher than that of male fetus. We found that there are very strong associations between cord leptin concentrations at delivery and birth weight, ponderal index of the baby, body mass index of the mothers with Type 2 DM. We also found that high leptin levels could represent an important feedback modulator of substrate supply and subsequently for adipose tissue status during late gestation or adipose tissue is the major determinant of circulating leptin levels.

Highlights

  • The hormone, leptin, is an adipocyte secreting signal that contributes to the regulation of energy balance by informing the brain of the amounts of adipose tissue in the body, thereby regulating food intake and energy expenditure.[1,2,3,4]

  • Both the level of obmRNA in adipose tissues and the plasma leptin concentrations are higher than those in men and this has been attributed to relatively greater body fat contents or reproductive hormones.[5,6,7]

  • The study population consisted of 30 babies, 15 male and 15 female babies, from nondiabetic mothers (NDbabies. 30 babies, 17 male and 13 female babies, born to gestational diabetes mellitus mothers (GDM-babies), 45 babies from type-2 DM mothers (DM babies), of them 21 were male babies and 24 were female babies

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Summary

Introduction

The hormone, leptin, is an adipocyte secreting signal that contributes to the regulation of energy balance by informing the brain of the amounts of adipose tissue in the body, thereby regulating food intake and energy expenditure.[1,2,3,4]. In a cross-sectional study of a large population of children of both sexes, it was observed that, at any age and at any pubertal stage studied, the girls always had higher leptin concentration than the boys.[8] This Þnding was evident even in the youngest age group studied, 5 years, which is a period of child development without any sex-related hormonal changes. We measured leptin concentrations in umbilical cord serum of a large group of infants of both sexes born to mothers having type-2 DM, GDM, ND at the time of delivery

Materials and Methods
Results
Discussion

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