Article Text
Abstract
Objective To evaluate the gene expression profile of whole blood cells in pregnant women without diabetes (with positive screening and negative diagnosis for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM)) compared with pregnant women with negative screening for GDM.
Research design and methods Pregnant women were recruited in the Diabetes Perinatal Research Centre—Botucatu Medical School-UNESP and Botucatuense Mercy Hospital (UNIMED). Distributed into 2 groups: control (n=8), women with negative screening and non-diabetic (ND, n=13), with positive screening and negative diagnosis of GDM. A peripheral blood sample was collected for glucose, glycated hemoglobin, and microarray gene expression analyses.
Results The evaluation of gene expression profiles showed significant differences between the control group and the ND group, with 22 differentially expressed gene sequences. Gene networks and interaction tables were generated to evaluate the biological processes associated with differentially expressed genes of interest.
Conclusions In the group with positive screening, there is an apparent regulatory balance between the functions of the differentially expressed genes related to the pathogenesis of diabetes and a compensatory attempt to mitigate the possible etiology. These results support the ‘two-step Carpenter-Coustan’ strategy because pregnant women with negative screening do not need to continue on diagnostic investigation of gestational diabetes, thus reducing the cost of healthcare and the medicalization of pregnancy. Although not diabetic, they do have risk factors, and thus attention to these genes is important when considering disease evolution because this pregnant women are a step toward developing diabetes compared with women without these risk factors.
- Hyperglycemia
- Screening
- Microarray Analysis
- Diagnostic Criteria
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Collaborators João Paulo de Castro Marcondes.
Contributors RBG researched the data, wrote, discussed and reviewed/edited the manuscript. DCD contributed to the discussion and reviewed/edited the manuscript. DMFS, IMPC and MVCR contributed to the discussion and reviewed/edited the manuscript. FP, DCM and RAAC contributed to the researched data.
Funding This work was supported by FAPESP—Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo/Brazil, grant number (2011/23749-1 and 2012/19362-7).
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent Obtained.
Ethics approval Research Ethics Committee—Brazil Platform (CAAE: 14489013.0.0000.5411, number 291638).
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement No additional data are available.