Manifestations of diabetes mellitus on mouse preimplantation development: effect of elevated concentration of metabolic intermediates.

The metabolic derangements of pregnancies complicated by diabetes mellitus, specifically hyperglycaemia and hyperketonaemia, are known to be teratogenic during the period of organogenesis in animals. We have shown previously that poorly controlled diabetes mellitus impairs in-vivo and in-vitro mouse preimplantation embryo growth, and that culturing embryos in elevated glucose concentrations only partially recreates this developmental delay. To extend this observation we examined the effect on mouse preimplantation embryo growth of elevated concentrations of other metabolic intermediates, which may be deranged in diabetes mellitus, namely lipids, lactate, glycerol, amino acids, and ketones. Two-cell embryos from ovulation-induced B6C3F1 mice were cultured for 72 h in the presence of added lipids (250 mg/dl), lactate (5 mM), glycerol (160 microM) or mixed amino acids (8.5% travasol, 7 mM) and showed no significant difference in growth over 72 h versus their control groups. However, growth of preimplantation embryos in acetoacetate (10 mM) or in the racemic mixture of DL-beta-hydroxybutyrate (16 and 32 mM) revealed marked retardation versus controls when assessed either by distribution of developmental stages over time (24, 48, 72 h, P < 0.001) or by the difference in the average rank of sums indicating a delay in maturation (P < 0.0001). We conclude that elevated ketone concentrations adversely affect preimplantation embryo development. These findings extend previous studies which correlate uncontrolled diabetes mellitus as well as hyperglycaemia with abnormal organogenesis, and demonstrate that exposure to metabolic derangements may also hinder reproductive performance at even earlier stages in gestation.