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Gestational Diabetes Linked to Incident Diabetes in Offspring

Risk for developing pediatric diabetes increased in offspring from birth through age 22 years

MONDAY, April 15, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Gestational diabetes mellitus is associated with incident diabetes in offspring throughout childhood and adolescence, according to a study published online April 15 in CMAJ, the journal of the Canadian Medical Association.

Andrea L. Blotsky, M.D., from McGill University in Montreal, and colleagues randomly selected singleton live births with maternal gestational diabetes mellitus and matched them to singleton live births without gestational diabetes mellitus. The correlations of diabetes in offspring with maternal gestational diabetes mellitus were examined in unadjusted and adjusted hazard models.

The researchers found that offspring born to mothers with gestational diabetes mellitus had a higher incidence of pediatric diabetes than those born to mothers without gestational diabetes mellitus (4.52 versus 2.4 per 10,000 person-years). In an adjusted model, maternal gestational diabetes mellitus was correlated with development of pediatric diabetes overall (birth to age 22 years: hazard ratio, 1.77), during childhood (birth to age 12 years: hazard ratio, 1.43), and in youth (age 12 to 22 years: hazard ratio, 2.53).

“Future studies are needed to examine longer-term outcomes in patients with pediatric diabetes with a history of maternal gestational diabetes mellitus, to ascertain how they compare with other patients with childhood- or youth-onset diabetes, in terms of disease severity and outcomes,” the authors write.

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