Metabonomic study of newborn infants with intrauterine growth restriction

Abstract

Objective To compare the differences in metabolites between newborns with intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and appropriate for gestational age (AGA) in order to understand the changes in metabolites of newborns with IUGR and explore the possible metabolic mechanism of tissue and organ damages in patients with IUGR, with the ultimate goal of providing the basis for clinical intervention. Methods A total of 45 newborns with IUGR and 56 AGA newborns who were hospitalized in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of Bayi Children's Hospital, the General Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army between July 2009 and June 2015 and who underwent metabolic disease screening were enrolled in this study.The differences in of 21 amino acids and 55 carnitines in peripheral blood, as well as the changes in the ratios of free carnitine and acylcarnitine to total carnitine, were compared. Results (1)According to the comparison of birth weights ( 0.05); however, for newborns with IUGR, metabolites significantly differed between male and female, and the concentrations of aspartic acid(t=2.521, P=0.016), glutamate(t=-2.175, P=0.035) in male IUGR were lower than those in female newborns with IUGR, but the concentration of 26-carbon carnitine (t=2.231, P=0.031) was higher than that in female group.(4) Birth weight had no significant effect on free carnitine concentration or on the ratios of free carnitine and acylcarnitine to total carnitine(all P>0.05). Conclusions IUGR infants exhibit significant abnormalities in amino acid and acylcarnitine metabolism, especially those with birth weight <3rd percentile.With the increase of birth weight, amino acids and acylcarnitines showed compensatory increases or decrease, and when birth weight reached the 10th percentile, the newborns with IUGR were close to the AGA newborns. Key words: Intrauterine growth restriction; Amino acids; Carnitine; Acylcarnitine; Metabolome