Metabolic Effects and Biomarkers Identification on Nicotine-Induced Intrauterine Growth Retardation with NMR-Based Metabonomic Strategy

Jianghua Feng¹

NMR-based metabonomic strategy was used to investigate the metabolic responses to nicotine-induced dose- and time-dependent effects. Multivariate analysis of NMR data from respective pathophysiological regime including materal and fetal plasma and rat amniotic fluids revealed that nicotine ingestion caused the abnormal changes of glucose, lipid and protein metabolisms. Furthermore, under the defined screening principles, a set of small molecular metabolites in maternal plasma were selected out as the candidate biomarker served the diagnosis of IUGR. Although the specificity and universality of these biomarkers need a further investigation, the present study gives a new clue for the diagnosis and prevention of IUGR.