OSA is common during pregnancy and is associated with adverse perinatal consequences, but it is not known whether it can also modulate fetal development processes
Methods. OSA was identified by polysomnography during pregnancy and defined as an apnea-hypopnea index ?5 h-1. We included 5 OSA and 5 non-OSA women. Cord blood RNA expression was analyzed by microarrays. To detect differentially expressed genes, a Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) was performed using GO (Gene Ontology), KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) and WikiPathways databases, limiting the analysis to pathologies and pathways related to OSA
Results. We detected 3307 significantly differentially expressed genes after normalizing the data (2536 over and 771 under expressed genes). GSEA analysis using the GO database showed 45 entries, which were grouped into 9 biological processes. The most significant groups were oxidative stress response, cell death regulation, insulin response and secretion, placental development, endothelial cell migration, and angiogenesis. We detected 8 significant entries related to apoptosis, insulin signaling pathways, leukocyte endothelial migration, and type 1 and 2 diabetes mellitus using the KEGG database in GSEA analysis. Finally, based on WikiPathways, GSEA analysis showed 17 entries for groups of differentially expressed genes between samples of both groups, which could be involved in OSA
Conclusions. Significant differences in gene expression profile in cord blood was found between samples from pregnancies with OSA and non-OSA that could potentially have a negative influence on various biological processes during fetal development