Insights into the Chemical Exposome during Pregnancy: A Non-Targeted Analysis of Preterm and Term Births

Human-made chemicals are ubiquitous, leading to chronic
exposure
to complex mixtures of potentially harmful substances. We investigated
chemical exposures in pregnant women in New York City by applying
a non-targeted analysis (NTA) workflow to 95 paired prenatal urine
and serum samples (35 pairs of preterm birth) collected as part of
the New York University Children’s Health and Environment Study.
We analyzed all samples using liquid chromatography coupled with Orbitrap
high-resolution mass spectrometry in both positive and negative electrospray
ionization modes, employing full scan and data-dependent MS/MS fragmentation
scans. We detected a total of 1524 chemical features for annotation,
with 12 chemicals confirmed by authentic standards. Two confirmed
chemicals dodecyltrimethylammonium and N,N-dimethyldecylamine N-oxide appear to
not have been previously reported in human blood samples. We observed
a statistically significant differential enrichment between urine
and serum samples, as well as between preterm and term birth (p < 0.0001) in serum samples. When comparing between
preterm and term births, an exogenous contaminant, 1,4-cyclohexanedicarboxylic
acid (tentative), showed a statistical significance difference (p = 0.003) with more abundance in preterm birth in serum.
An example of chemical associations (12 associations in total) observed
was between surfactants (tertiary amines) and endogenous metabolites
(fatty acid amides).

人造化学物质无处不在，导致人类长期暴露于可能有害物质的复杂混合物中。本研究旨在探究纽约市孕妇的化学暴露情况，通过应用非靶向分析（NTA）工作流程，对纽约大学儿童健康与环境研究项目中收集的95对配对孕期尿液和血清样本（其中35对为早产样本）进行了分析。研究采用液相色谱联用Orbitrap高分辨质谱仪，在正负电喷雾电离模式下进行全扫描和数据依赖性MS/MS碎裂扫描。共检测到1524个化学特征以供注释，其中12种化学物质经标准品确证。两种确证的化学物质——十二烷基三甲基铵和N,N-二甲基癸基胺N-氧化物——似乎之前未曾报道于人类血液样本中。研究观察到尿液与血清样本之间，以及早产与足月出生之间的血清样本中存在统计学上显著的差异富集（p < 0.0001）。在比较早产与足月出生时，一种外源性污染物——1,4-环己烷二羧酸（暂定名称）——在血清样本中表现出统计学上的显著差异（p = 0.003），其在早产样本中的含量更高。观察到的化学关联（总计12个关联）之一为表面活性剂（三级胺）与内源性代谢物（脂肪酸酰胺）之间的关联。