SAN DIEGO — Weight gain in the 5 years before pregnancy is associated with an increased risk for gestational diabetes, Monique Hedderson reported in a poster at the annual scientific sessions of the American Diabetes Association.
In a nested case-control study including 114 women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and 95 controls who were members of Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, those who had gained between 1 kg and 10 kg in the 5 years before their last menstrual period were nearly twice as likely (crude odds ratio 1.98) to have developed GDM during pregnancy than were those whose weight remained within 1 kg of baseline. Those who had lost 1.1–8.3 kg had an insignificantly lower unadjusted risk for GDM (0.79), said Ms. Hedderson, of Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, Calif., and her associates.
The women who developed GDM were older, more likely to be from an ethnic minority group, more likely to be overweight at baseline, and more likely to be primiparous or to have had at least two prior live births. After adjustment for these factors, the relationship between prepregnancy weight gain and GDM was even stronger, with an odds ratio of 2.58. The relationship with weight loss was again insignificant (OR 0.9).