Introduction
Gestational lipids increase throughout pregnancy as a physiological
response to adapt
gestation.1 TG
level increased significantly from the first trimester to the third
trimester contributing to maternal energy storage and fetal
growth.2 However, dyslipidemia in pregnancy is closely
associated with the development of pregnancy complications such as
GDM,3 hypertensive disorders of pregnancy
(HDP)4 and intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy
(ICP).5 Elevated TG level can lead to
hypertriglyceridemia,6 which is one of the most severe
dyslipidemia and has been proved to cause cardiovascular disease and
metabolic disorders.7-9 However, threshold of
gestational TG level and the postpartum outcome of the TG elevation
during gestation is unclear.
Puerperium refers to the period of time that organs and systems of
puerpera require to return to or approach a normal state of
non-pregnancy, usually lasts 42 days. Therefore, blood lipid test at 42
days postpartum is of great significance to evaluate the recovery of
puerpera and predict the risk of future disease. It was found that the
prevalence of postpartum dyslipidemia in women with GDM was
significantly higher than non-GDM women, which suggested the importance
to explore the association between lipid levels during pregnancy and
postpartum.10
Many factors affect serum lipids levels. For pregnant women, pre-BMI is
a major threat. Studies have found that overweight and obese pregnant
women have higher TG level than normal women throughout
gestation.11 But it is not clear whether the effect of
pre-BMI on gestational TG will continue to postpartum.
This prospective study aimed to characterize changes in serum TG level
from pregnancy to postpartum and investigate the association of
gestational TG with the risk of postpartum hypertriglyceridemia; also to
select TG cutoff points of each gestational week; moreover, we
investigated whether pre-BMI or GDM affects such an association.