ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Children and Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1623604
This article is part of the Research TopicPrenatal Environmental and Genetic Interactions: An Exploration from Fetal Development to Child HealthView all 9 articles
Progress of infant obesity is associated with higher aspartyl-glutamate and alanyl-aspartate in maternal and neonatal blood
Provisionally accepted
- 1Peking University Third Hospital, Haidian, China
- 2UIC School Of Public Health, Chicago, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective: Neonatal obesity may be associated with the intra-uterine environment during pregnancy. The objective of this study was to evaluate the risk of neonatal obesity born from the mothers with abnormal glucose and lipid metabolism.Methods: Twenty neonates born from maternal glucose and lipid metabolism disorders and developed obesity at 6 months of age were enrolled as study group, and 20 neonates without obesity were included as control group. Nontargeted metabolomic analysis was performed in maternal serum during pregnancy and neonatal cord blood at birth to identify differential metabolites.Results: The concentrations of aspartyl-glutamate and alanyl-aspartate in maternal serum progressively rise steadily as gestational age advances, peaking in umbilical cord blood. Additionally, at each stage of pregnancy (early, middle, and late), the levels in both maternal serum and umbilical cord blood are significantly higher in the obese group than in the non-obese group. Their mechanisms of action may be associated with pathways involving immuneinflammatory regulation, energy metabolism, and gut microbiota modulation. Their mechanisms of action may be associated with pathways involving immune-inflammatory regulation, energy metabolism, and gut microbiota modulation.Conclusion: Through the analysis of maternal blood during pregnancy and umbilical cord blood, this study putatively identified some differential metabolites associated with neonatal obesity. In the future, it is expected that analyzing maternal blood or umbilical cord blood at birth could help predict potential infant obesity risks, enabling more dietary guidance and interventions during infancy to reduce the risk of obesity later in life.
Keywords: infants, Glucose and lipid metabolism, Obesity, Metabolomics, Pregnancy
Received: 06 May 2025; Accepted: 15 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Ma, Yu, Yang, Yang, Han and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yongqing Wang, Peking University Third Hospital, Haidian, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.