Gestational Diabetes Linked to Childhood Diabetes Risk

Children of mothers with a history of gestational diabetes have an increased risk of developing diabetes themselves, according to the results of a recent study.

While type 1 and type 2 diabetes in parents is already a well-established risk factor for diabetes in children, the authors of the new study sought to examine the impact of gestational diabetes mellitus on risk of diabetes in children before the age of 22 years.

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For their study, they matched records from singleton live births with maternal gestational diabetes mellitus 1:1 with control births with no diabetes, and, in a secondary analysis, examined age groups ranging from birth to age 12 years and age 12 to 22 years separately.

Overall, the incidence of pediatric diabetes was higher in the children of mothers with gestational diabetes mellitus than in those of mothers without diabetes (4.52 vs 2.4 per 10,000 person-years, respectively). In an adjusted Cox proportional hazards model, maternal gestational diabetes mellitus was associated with development of pediatric diabetes (birth to age 22 years: hazard ration [HR] 1.77), during childhood (birth to age 12 years: HR 1.43), and in youth (age 12 to 22 years: HR 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.”

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Blotsky AL, Rahme E, Dahhou M, et al. Gestational diabetes associated with incident diabetes in childhood and youth: a retrospective cohort study [published online April 15, 2019]. CMAJ. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.181001.