Blood Test Can Identify Pregnant Women at Risk of Diabetes

Filed in archive Information , Notable , Research on June 5, 2007

Since I started writing for this blog, I've incessantly mentioned gestational diabetes, the diabetes induced by pregnancy.

Now, according to a study published in the June issue of the Postgraduate Medical Journal: more that one third of these women who had diabetes during pregnancy develop type 2 diabetes within five years.

But the good news is, those most at risk can be predicted; judging from their blood glucose levels upon diagnosis - specifically the HbA1c - a measure of the amount of blood glucose attached to the hemoglobin of red blood cells.

While assessing plasma blood glucose levels using the HbA1c test is not a very sensitive method for diagnosing gestational diabetes, those women with higher HbA1c levels when this type of diabetes is diagnosed are much more at risk of developing type 2 diabetes later.

As set out in standard 2 of the National Screening Framework for diabetes, indeed it is important to identify diabetes risk as early as possible.

Especially in pregnant women! So please, if you are pregnant and have been diagnosed with gestational diabetes, ask your doctor about the results of your HbA1c test.

Find more details from the full report.