Association between maternal serum essential trace element concentration in early pregnancy and gestational diabetes mellitus.

Background: Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) remains a major pregnancy metabolic issue. Although evidence suggested that essential trace elements (ETEs) may alter glycemic regulation during pregnancy, their associations with GDM remained uncertain.

Methods: From the Peking University Birth Cohort in Tongzhou (PKUBC-T) with a total of 5426 participants, we randomly selected 200 cases with GDM and 200 matched controls without GDM to conduct a nested case-control study. The matching was on maternal age ( ± 2 years) and gestational week at which the oral glucose tolerance test was performed. We evaluated the levels of six ETEs (Cu, Zn, Se, Mo, Co, Cr) in serum samples collected at the first trimester (10.3 ± 1.6 gestational weeks). Associations were assessed with unconditional logistic regressions and Bayesian kernel machine regression.

Results: Serum Co concentrations in pregnant women with GDM (Median: 0.920 ug/L) were observed to be lower than in controls (Median: 0.973 ug/L). Compared to those with the lowest tertile, the pregnant women with the highest tertile of Co concentrations had decreased risk of GDM (OR = 0.56, 95% CI: 0.34-0.93, P = 0.024) in the adjusted models. The association was further confirmed in the multiple-exposure analysis. The overall concentrations of six ETE mixtures showed an inverse association with GDM although not significant.

Conclusion: Our study added new evidence that maternal serum Co level was inversely associated with the risk of GDM, indicating that maternal deficiency of Co may play a role in the development of GDM.