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. 2025 Mar 29;56(2):124.
doi: 10.1007/s10735-025-10398-3.

Fatty acid binding protein 4 knockdown improves fetal development in rats with gestational diabetes mellitus through modulating autophagy mediated by the PTEN/Akt/mTOR signaling pathway

Fanglei Yang  1 , Yifan Mao  1 , Bin Tang  1 , Rui Xu  1 , Feiyun Jiang  2
Affiliations

Fatty acid binding protein 4 knockdown improves fetal development in rats with gestational diabetes mellitus through modulating autophagy mediated by the PTEN/Akt/mTOR signaling pathway

Fanglei Yang et al. J Mol Histol. .

Abstract

We aimed to investigate whether fatty acid binding protein 4 (FABP4) knockdown can ameliorate fetal development in rats with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) through modulating autophagy mediated by the phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted on chromosome ten (PTEN)/serine/threonine protein kinase B (Akt)/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway. Blank group (n = 12), GDM group (n = 12), small interfering negative control (si-NC) group (n = 12), si-FABP4 group (n = 12), and si-FABP4 + PTEN group (n = 12) were set up for the random assignment of pregnant rats. Compared to the blank group of pregnant rats, the serum FABP4 level, abortion rate, fasting insulin, homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance index, development malformation rate and incidence rate of intrauterine growth restriction of fetal rats, as well as PTEN and Beclin-1 protein expressions and light chain 3 type II (LC3-ΙI)/LC3-Ι ratio in placental tissues rose significantly, while the phosphorylated (p)-Akt/Akt ratio, p62 protein expression, and p-mTOR/mTOR ratio in placental tissues dropped significantly in the GDM plus si-NC group (P < 0.05). FABP4 knockdown improves fetal development in GDM rats, and its mechanism of action is probably related with the inhibited autophagy by regulating the PTEN/Akt/mTOR signaling pathway.

Keywords: Autophagy; Fetal development; Gestational diabetes mellitus; Pathway; Rat.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Ethical approval: The study was approved by the animal ethics committee of Wuhu Second People’s Hospital (2024-KY-009).

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