Abstract
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is one of the leading causes of offspring malformations, in which eye malformation is an important disease. It has raised demand for therapy to improve fetal outcomes. In this study, we used chick embryo to establish a GDM model to study the protective effects of proanthocyanidins on eye development. Chick embryos were exposed to high glucose (0.2 mmol/egg) on embryo development day (EDD) 1. Proanthocyanidins (1 and 10 nmol/egg) were injected into the air sac on EDD 0. Results showed that both dosages of proanthocyanidins could prevent the eye malformation and rescue the high glucose-induced oxidative stress significantly, which the similar effects were showed in edaravone. However, proanthocyanidins could not decrease the glucose concentration of embryo eye. Moreover, the key genes regulating eye development, Pax6, was down-regulated by high glucose. Proanthocyanidins could restore the suppressed expression of Pax6. These results indicated proanthocyanidins might be a promising natural agent to prevent high glucose-induced eye malformation by restoring Pax6 expression.
Highlights
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a maternal state with a proven higher fetal malformation rate [1]
In this study, we decided to study whether proanthocyanidins can ameliorate the eye malformation of embryos induced by high glucose in chick embryos
We found that proanthocyanidins could significantly lower the death rate and decrease the hyperglycemia-induced malformation rate of eyes from 46.7% to 25.7% (ProL) and
Summary
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a maternal state with a proven higher fetal malformation rate [1]. Infants born to women with GDM are at increased risk of adverse perinatal outcomes, such as congenital anomalies, macrosomia leading to birth trauma [2], hypoglycaemia [3], respiratory distress [4], polycythaemia jaundice [5], etc. Among these abnormalities, eye malformation has drawn great attention. Heterozygous mutations in Pax have been found in patients with aniridia [12], iris hypoplasia, corneal opacification, autosomal dominant keratitis and isolated foveal hypoplasia [13,14] These studies clearly showed the importance of Pax in eye development. In this study, we decided to study whether proanthocyanidins can ameliorate the eye malformation of embryos induced by high glucose in chick embryos
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