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Abstract Objective: To estimate cord blood amino acid and acyl-carnitine concentrations in term infants of diabetic mothers (IDMs) and to assess their relation to cord blood ferritin level. Methods: We studied 50 term IDMs (cases) and 25 healthy newborns (controls). Thirty-seven (37) cases were infants of gestational diabetic mothers (IGDM) while 13 cases were infants of pre-gestational diabetic mothers (IPGDM) .Amino acid and acyl-carnitine concentrations were measured in cord blood dried spot samples from all newborns using ultra performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS). Cord blood ferritin was analyzed by ELISA. Data was analyzed using one way ANOVA with post-hoc test and MetaboAnalyst-2. Results: Principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares-discriminate analysis (PLS-DA) showed increased concentrations of amino acids; aspartic, leucine/isoleucine (Leu-Ile) and valine but reduced concentrations of methionine, methionine-phenylalanine (Met-Phe) and Phe-Tyr (phenylalanine-tyrosine). They also showed increased acyl-carnitines; C4-OH(C3-DC), C0-Carnitine, C2-Carnitine, C5-Carnitine, C5-DC, C18-Carnitine and C16:1. There was no significant difference between IGDM and IPGDM except in C6-carnitine which was significantly lower in IPGDM. IDMs have significantly lower cord blood ferritin than controls (p<0.001). Cord blood ferritin was negatively correlated with maternal HbA1C (r=-0.314; p=0.026), maternal body mass index (r=--0.452; p=0.001) and birth weight (r=--0.42; p=0.002). There was no significant correlation between cord blood ferritin and studied metabolites. Conclusion: We report that IDMs have alterations in amino acid concentrations and carnitine shuttle at birth and have low in-utero iron stores. Low in-utero iron stores in IDMs is not related to amino acid and acyl-carnitine concentrations at birth. |