Risk of an Obese Child Rises With Mother’s Glucose Levels During Pregnancy
“The higher your blood glucose is during pregnancy, the greater your child’s chances of growing up to be obese”, according to a recent study published in Diabetes Care.
Metabolic imprinting is the mechanism behind this outcome. It is presumed that when children in the womb are overfed by the high blood sugars of their mothers, they become pre-programmed for obesity, or imprinted.
It was noted however that given the proper treatment of the high blood sugars would help eliminate the risk. Mothers who received treatment had children who were not likely to get fat compared to other children. This includes mothers who initially had the highest blood sugars.
9,439 mother-child pairs who gave birth between 1995 and 2000 were part of the study. No one of them had pre-existing diabetes. They were all screened for gestational diabetes and high blood sugars. Their resulting children were weighed at the age in which excess weight best predicts adult obesity, between the ages of five and seven.
The researchers found that “the risk of a child becoming overweight is directly proportional to the mother’s blood sugar levels during pregnancy. Women who had untreated gestational diabetes were almost twice as likely to end up with overweight children. Even when their blood sugar levels did not rise to the level of gestational diabetes, there was still an increase in risk that correlated directly to the amount by which their sugars were elevated.”
From these findings, the researchers had recommended that every mother should be tested for gestational diabetes and high blood glucose. Thy should all receive treatment that will lower their blood sugars to the normal level. The researchers suggested that the threshold for diagnosing gestational diabetes should be lowered from 140 to 130 mg/dl.
February 08 2008 04:11 pm | Research