Abstract
Introduction & Objective: Both maternal adiposity and dysglycemia induce low-grade inflammation that impacts the fetal intrauterine milieu. We examined the association between maternal proinflammatory markers with gestational glycemia, and pregestational BMI. Methods: From the Early Tracking of Childhood Health Determinants (ETCHED) longitudinal observational study, data on 66 pregnant Hispanic (73%) and American Indian women were available (May 2022-Sep 2023); 33% had diabetes. We analyzed baseline glycemic measures (fasting glucose, insulin, C-peptide, HbA1c), proinflammatory biomarkers (IL-6, hsCRP), and maternal leptin. Results: Mean age was 29.9 years (SD ±6.3), mean pregestational BMI was 33.1 kg/m2 (SD±9.4). Table 1 shows significant positive Spearman correlations between maternal serum IL-6 and hsCRP with pregestational BMI, insulin, HbA1c, C-peptide, and leptin. There was no significant correlation between pregestational BMI and offspring birth weight. In a subset (n=40) of matched samples maternal IL-6 was correlated with cord-blood leptin (r=0.34, p=0.03) and TNF-α (r=0.31, p=0.04). Conclusion: Gestational maternal proinflammatory cytokines were elevated in women with excess adiposity and hyperglycemia. Maternal IL-6 associated with fetal adipocytokines, however, additional data are needed to explore this relationship and its impact on fetal growth and development.