Lipid Characteristics of Pregnant Women With Subclinical Hypothyroidism and Their Correlation to the Pregnancy Outcomes

Abstract Subclinical hypothyroidism (SCH) in pregnancy has become an important complication of pregnancy. We used nontargeted lipidomics to compare differential metabolites between women with SCH and healthy women. The metabolic pathways of the differential metabolites were analyzed using the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) database. We found: 1. Multivariate analysis revealed 143 lipid molecules with different levels between the SCH group and the control group. Based on fold change, 30 differential lipid metabolites were selected as potential biomarkers. 2. KEGG pathway enrichment analysis showed that the differential metabolites participate in such pathways as pathogenic Escherichia coli infection response, metabolic pathways, glycerophospholipid metabolism. 3. Correlation analysis showed that sphingomyelin (SM) and phosphatidylcholine (PC) were positively correlated with tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), C-reactive protein (CRP), and interleukin-6 (IL-6), while phosphatidylglycerol (PG), and phosphatidylinositol (PI) were negatively correlated with them. And PG was positively correlated with birth weight. The lipid profile of pregnant women with SCH is significantly different from that of healthy pregnant women. Lipid molecules with differential metabolism, such as SM, PE, and PI, might be targets for further investigation of the pathogenesis of SCH in pregnancy and reduce the incidence of adverse pregnancy outcomes.