SAN DIEGO – Maternal glycemia was associated with anthropometric measures of obesity in offspring during childhood, but not with childhood body mass index, fasting glucose, or insulin resistance in a secondary analysis of a long-term follow-up study of women with mild gestational diabetes mellitus.
Baseline maternal body mass index (BMI), maternal weight gain, and Hispanic ethnicity, however, were consistently related to childhood BMI (P < .01) in the study of 236 children born to women who had untreated mild gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and 480 children whose mothers had a normal oral glucose tolerance test during pregnancy.
Courtesy Ohio State University
Dr. Mark B. Landon
The findings underscore the importance of reducing obesity prior to pregnancy, and suggest that obesity reduction efforts should be emphasized in clinical practice, Dr. Mark B. Landon said at the annual Pregnancy Meeting sponsored by the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.
“The obesity epidemic certainly has not spared the pediatric population,” said Dr. Landon, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the Ohio State University in Columbus.
And a serious concern is that overweight and obesity are associated with a downstream risk of both metabolic and cardiovascular abnormalities into adulthood, he added.
Hispanic ethnicity and maternal BMI were also associated with childhood homeostatic model assessment-insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), and Hispanic ethnicity was associated with fasting glucose, Dr. Landon reported on behalf of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network.
There was a significant correlation between fasting, 1-hour, 2-hour, and 3-hour maternal glucose and subscapular/triceps skin fold ratio (Spearman correlation coefficients, 0.10, 0.08, 0.11, and 0.12, respectively). Similar correlations were seen between maternal glucose and HOMA-IR, and maternal glucose and sum of skin folds.
Fasting maternal glucose and fasting child glucose were also significantly correlated (Spearman correlation coefficients, 0.09).
On multivariable regression analysis – after controlling for maternal and neonatal factors – the only significant correlations between maternal glycemia and childhood outcomes were for 1-hour, 2-hour, and 3-hour maternal glucose measures, sum of skin folds, and subscapular/triceps skin fold ratio, he said.