Serum Fetuin-A and Risk of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus: An Observational Study and Mendelian Randomization Analysis

Fetuin-A was reported to be associated with risk of type 2 diabetes, but its association with incident gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) was less studied.

We aimed to examine the association between fetuin-A levels in early pregnancy and risk of incident GDM and to evaluate whether this association was causal.

A total of 332 pregnant women with GDM and 664 matched controls were included in this nested case-control study. Multivariable conditional logistic regression was applied to investigate the prospective association between serum fetuin-A in early pregnancy and subsequent risk of GDM. Two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis was used to examine the causal association, using summary statistics from the CHARGE Consortium and the FinnGen consortium.

The mean age of the participants was 28.0 years, and the mean gestational age was 11.0 weeks (range 6-15) at enrollment. In the final model, the odds ratio (OR) for GDM comparing the extreme quartiles of fetuin-A levels was 1.78 (95% CI 1.06, 2.98; P for trend = 0.009), and the restricted cubic spline analysis indicated a linear association (P for nonlinearity = 0.83). This positive association was found in women with waist circumference <80 cm but not in those with waist circumference ≥80 cm (P for interaction = 0.04). However, MR analyses showed no evidence of a causal association with an OR of 0.91 (95% CI 0.67, 1.23) per unit increment of fetuin-A.

Serum fetuin-A levels in early pregnancy were positively associated with risk of GDM, particularly in those with normal waist circumference. However, we found no genetic evidence for a causal association.