Association of WISP1/CCN4 with Risk of Overweight and Gestational Diabetes Mellitus in Chinese Pregnant Women

Background. Obese women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) have a higher risk of adverse outcomes than women with obesity or GDM alone. Our study is aimed at investigating the discriminatory power of circulatory Wnt1-inducible signaling pathway protein-1 (WISP1), a novel adipocytokine, on the copresence of prepregnancy overweight/obesity and GDM and at clarifying the relationship between the WISP1 level and clinical cardiometabolic parameters. Methods. A total of 313 participants were screened from a multicenter prospective prebirth cohort: Born in Shenyang Cohort Study (BISCS). Subjects were examined with a 2×2 factorial design for body mass index BMI≥24 and GDM. Between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy, follow-up individuals underwent an OGTT and blood sampling for cardiometabolic characterization. Results. We observed that the WISP1 levels were elevated in prepregnancy overweight/obesity patients with GDM, compared with nonoverweight subjects with normal blood glucose (3.45±0.89 vs. 2.91±0.75 ng/mL). Multilogistic regression analyses after adjustments for potential confounding factors revealed that WISP1 was a strong and independent risk factor for prepregnancy overweight/obesity with GDM (all ORs>1). In addition, the results of the ROC analysis indicated that WISP1 exhibited the capability to identify individuals with prepregnancy overweight/obesity and GDM (all AUC>0.5). Finally, univariate and multivariate linear regression showed that WISP1 level was positively and independently correlated with fasting blood glucose, systolic blood pressure, and aspartate aminotransferase and was negatively correlated with HDL-C and complement C1q. Conclusions. WISP1 may be critical for the prediction, diagnosis, and therapeutic strategies against obesity and GDM in pregnant women.