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Researchers will unveil findings that suggest pregnant women who do not have diabetes but deliver a large-for-gestational age baby are at an increased risk of developing prediabetes or Type 2 diabetes 10-14 years later in a new study to be presented at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's (SMFM) annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting -- and published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Researchers used data from the Hyperglycemia and Adverse Pregnancy Outcome (HAPO) Follow-up Study. HAPO, an observational study, examined glucose tolerance in a large, multi-national, racially diverse cohort in their third trimester of pregnancy; the Follow-up Study looked at the association between gestational diabetes and the long-term health outcomes of pregnant people and their children. Among the 4,025 individuals who did not have gestational diabetes, 13 per cent (535 people) had an LGA infant; 8 per cent (314 people) had a small-for-gestational age (SGA) infant; and 79 per cent (3,176 people) had an average-for-gestational age (AGA) or normally grown infant. Data revealed that 10 to 14 years after giving birth, 20 per cent (791 people) were diagnosed with prediabetes or diabetes and that the frequency of prediabetes or diabetes was higher among people who had an LGA birth (24.8 per cent) compared to those who had an SGA birth (15.4 per cent) or even more importantly, those who had an AGA birth (19.7 per cent). The increased risk of diabetes and prediabetes with a LGA infant was the case even after researchers adjusted for risk factors for developing Type 2 diabetes, such as age, obesity, high blood pressure, and family history of diabetes. "So often in clinical practice when we see big babies and the individual doesn't have gestational diabetes, we do not talk about the health consequences for the mother later in life," says the study's lead author Kartik K. Venkatesh, MD, PhD, a maternal-fetal medicine subspecialist and assistant professor of obstetrics and gynaecology and assistant professor of epidemiology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus. "But this research suggests there may also be health consequences for the pregnant person even without gestational diabetes when they have a larger than normal-sized infant. That's why it's so important to follow large groups of people and their babies, regardless of whether they had gestational diabetes or not, over a long period of time. "The real implication of this research is that we need to stop thinking of pregnancy care as episodic care by making these connections between pregnancy and long-term health outcomes in mothers and children in order to see the bigger picture. (ANI)
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