Portable Home‐Use Triglyceride Meter Demonstrates Good Agreement With Plasma Laboratory Measures During Pregnancies Complicated by Metabolic Disease

BACKGROUND: Fasting and postprandial triglycerides (PPTG) in obese pregnancies may be stronger predictors of fetal overgrowth than glucose, making them a potential novel treatment target. Measurement of TG currently requires venipuncture in a laboratory, a barrier to collecting repeated measures to understand contributions to fetal growth. Our aim was to evaluate agreement between fingerstick capillary TG using an FDA-approved point-of-care (POC) meter and venipuncture plasma TG (vTG) during fasting and controlled fed conditions within pregnant women. METHODS: ) had fasting vTG and POC TG collected, within ≤ 5 min apart at 25 ± 9 weeks' gestation. A subset (n = 23) had PPTG collected at 1- and 2-h after a controlled breakfast test meal (35 ± 2 weeks). Two-way mixed effects intraclass correlations (ICC) and Bland-Altman plots determined agreement. Paired t-tests were used to compare vTG and POC TG (mean ± SD). RESULTS: Sixty-eight paired fasting TG and 52 paired 1- and 2-h PPTG were collected. Fasting vTG were slightly lower than POC TG (181 ± 66 vs. 192 ± 81 mg/dL), as were 1-h (225 ± 65 vs. 260 ± 76) and 2-h PPTG (227 ± 70 vs. 249 ± 77; p < 0.05 all). The ICC for fasting TG was 0.86 [95% CI: 0.78, 0.91] and 0.84 [95% CI: 0.32, 0.94] for PPTG. The mean % difference (vTG minus POC TG) was -4.6% ± 17.8% for fasting TG and -12.0% ± 12.0% for PPTG. DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION: These data suggest good agreement between vTG and POC TG in fasting and PPTG during pregnancies complicated by obesity and GDM. Our findings support the novel approach to utilising a POC TG meter, similar to a glucometer, to conveniently discern the contribution of TG and their potential targets in optimising fetal growth in pregnant patients with obesity and GDM.