Early pregnancy biomarkers
Table 2 shows early pregnancy biomarkers between women of Indian and European ethnicity. Mean haemoglobin was significantly lower among women of Indian ethnicity, compared with European (123.9 vs 129.0 g/L respectively, p<0.01). Random blood glucose at 15±1 and 20±1 weeks gestation was similar between groups. Indian mothers had an overall less favourable lipid profile, including increased triglycerides (1.6±0.6 vs 1.5±0.6, p<0.01), and reduced HDL cholesterol (1.7±0.4 vs 1.9±04, p<0.01). Indian women also had a higher total cholesterol/HDL ratio after adjustment for confounding factors (p<0.01).
We observed statistically significant differences between Indian and European women in univariable analysis, for the following 11 biomarkers: adiponectin (p<0.01), placental growth factor (PlGF; p=0.02), plasma specific neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL; p<0.01), periostin (p=0.03), matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9; p=0.04), intracellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1; p<0.01), tumour necrosis factor receptor superfamily member 1A (TNFR1A; p=0.01), CXC motif chemokine 10 (CXCL10; p=0.04), interleukin-1 receptor-like 1 (ST2; p=0.01 and p=0.03), angiogenin (p=0.01), and atrial natriuretic peptide propeptide (proANP; p=0.01). After adjustment for maternal characteristics this effect remained for all biomarkers except TNFR1A (p=0.14). Particularly large differences in mean values were observed for adiponectin (4.1 ug/ml [±1.6], Indian vs 4.6 [±2.1], European) and ICAM-1 (1,032 ng/ml [±2,559], Indian vs 704 [±682], European). In addition, neither sensitivity analyses significantly changed the results as presented in table 2. See supplemental table S2 for a correlation matrix of the included biomarkers (lipids excluded). As is expected, correlations between many of the biomarkers were observed, with adiponectin showing the least correlations with other biomarkers.