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 factorial design for body mass index 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 ( vs. ). 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 ). In addition, the results of the ROC analysis indicated that WISP1 exhibited the capability to identify individuals with prepregnancy overweight/obesity and GDM (all ). 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