Obese children may have a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes if their mothers had gestational diabetes during pregnancy, according to a recent study.
"The ever growing number of women with gestational diabetes (18%) suggests that the future will be filled with children with early diabetes at a rate that far exceeds the current prevalence," wrote Tara Holder of Yale University, New Haven, Conn., and her associates in Diabetologia.
"Offspring of GDM [gestational diabetes mellitus] mothers ought to be screened for impaired glucose tolerance and/or impaired fasting glucose, and preventive and therapeutic strategies should be considered before the development of full clinical manifestation of diabetes," the researchers reported online (Diabetologia 2014 Aug. 29 [doi: 10.1007/s00125-014-3345-2]).
The investigators conducted an oral glucose tolerance test to establish normal glucose tolerance among 210 obese teens who had not been exposed to GDM and 45 obese teens who had been exposed. Then they conducted another OGTT at an average follow-up of 2.8 years later.
A fasting glucose level of less than 5.55 mmol/L and a 2-hour glucose level of less than 7.77 mmol/L were defined as normal glucose tolerance. A fasting glucose of 5.55-6.88 mmol/L was considered impaired, and a fasting glucose greater than 6.88 mmol/ L or a 2-hour glucose greater than 11.05 mmol/L was designated type 2 diabetes.
At follow-up, 91.4% of the teens not exposed to GDM had normal glucose tolerance, compared with 68.9% of the teens exposed to GDM. Therefore, 8.6% of those not exposed to GDM and 31.1% of those exposed to GDM had developed either impaired glucose tolerance or type 2 diabetes.
The research and researchers were supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Science, the Yale Diabetes Endocrinology Research Center, the European Society of Pediatric Endocrinology, the American Heart Association, the Stephen Morse Diabetes Research Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the American Diabetes Association. The authors had no disclosures.