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Research Article: Cord Blood Spexin Level in Mothers with Obesity—Forecast of Future Obesity?

Date Published: 2023-09-06

Abstract:
Spexin (SPX) is a peptide that plays an important role in the regulation of food intake and body weight (BW) by the effect on carbohydrate-lipid metabolism. However, the role of SPX in fetal life, in children, and in adolescent metabolism is limited. Therefore, we decided to check whether obesity affects the concentration of SPX in the mother’s peripheral blood (MB) and umbilical cord blood (UCB). Using MB and UCB sera on the day of delivery obtained from 48 women (24 non-obese and 24 obese) and commercially available Elisa kits and colorimetric assays, we determined changes in SPX and the relationship between SPX concentration and other metabolic and anthropometric markers (body weight and BMI) on the day of delivery and in children at the age of 36 months. We found lower concentrations of SPX in MB (p < 0.05) and UCB (p < 0.01) derived from obese women (BMI > 30) and a moderate linear correlation (r = 0.4429; p < 0.01) between SPX concentrations in MB and UCB. We also noted that the concentration of SPX is not correlated with the child’s body weight on the day of birth (r = ?0.0128). However, there is a relationship between SPX at birth and body weight at 3 years of age (r = ?0.3219; p < 0.05). Based on the obtained results, it can be assumed that spexin is one of the factors modulating the child’s metabolism already in the fetal period and can be considered a potential marker of future predisposition to obesity. However, confirmation of this thesis requires additional research.

Introduction:
Every year, bioinformatics research aimed at searching for previously unknown biologically active substances produced by the human body provides information on new peptides, neuropeptides, and proteins that perform important metabolic functions. One of these substances that has become known relatively recently is spexin. Spexin (SPX, also called neuropeptide Q (NPQ)) is a very conservative 14-amino acid peptide described for the first time in 2007 [1]. Still, little is known about the function of this peptide. So…

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