Gestational Diabetes at Increasing Rates

Filed in archive News , Notable on April 30, 2008

diabetes in pregnancy (gestational diabetes) is on the rise, as reported by the U.S. News and World Report.


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Though gestational diabetes is manageable, the condition, if not controlled properly can can cause stillbirths, miscarriages and maybe even birth defects.

"A baby's organs form during the first five to eight weeks of pregnancy," says Steven Gabbe, dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and an obstetrician who specializes in diabetes and pregnancy. "If a mother's diabetes is poorly controlled, she can have up to a 25 percent risk of delivering a baby with a major malformation of the heart, brain, or skeleton."

On top of putting both mother and infant to increased risk of type 2 diabetes at one point in the future.

Therefore it is alarming that the rates of women developing diabetes when pregnant is going up.

So experts are concerned that the number of women who already have diabetes by the time they conceive is rising rapidly: Between 1999 and 2005, the group doubled in size, growing significantly across all age, racial, and ethnic groups examined by Kaiser Permanent Southern California researchers, who report their findings in May's Diabetes Care. Different from gestational diabetes, a temporary type that some women develop well into pregnancy, prepregnancy diabetes can pose more of a threat to a developing fetus.

All women with gestational diabetes (including Angelina Jolie who was reported to have it too) must really be extra careful. Some dietary and lifestyle changes are necessary.