Gestational diabetes occurs when a pregnant woman has higher levels than normal glucose or blood sugar.Women who have been diagnosed with gestational diabetes face a greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the future.
"It is believed that gestational diabetes occurs due to a combination of underlying metabolic anomalies in the mother and temporary metabolic changes that take place during pregnancy," says researcher Baiju R. Shah, from the University of Toronto, the science centerof Sunnybrook health and the Institute of Evaluation Clinical Sciences in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Precisely, Shah directs an investigation that has shown that the sex of a fetus can affect the mother's risk of developing gestational diabetes or type 2 diabetes in the future .According to the study, published in 'Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & AMP;Metabolism ', women who had children were more likely to develop gestational diabetes than those who were pregnant with girls .
"Our findings suggest that a male fetus leads to greater metabolic changes associated with pregnancy than those produced by a female fetus," explains this expert.Its retrospective cohort study based on the population used Ontario insurance records to analyze the diabetes case rate between almost 643,000 women who had their first child between April 2000 and March 2010, including only in the investigation the simple births.
Although the researchers found that women who had children were more likely to develop gestational diabetes, women who developed gestational diabetes while they were pregnant with daughters were at a greater risk of being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes after pregnancy.This suggests that these women had more serious underlying metabolic abnormalities that make them more susceptible to gestational diabetes, even without the aggregate impact of a developing male fetus, Shah details.
"Public health programs often focus on how the health, behavior and physiology of the pregnant mother can affect the health of her baby," says Shah."However, this study suggests that the baby can help better understand the mother's health and predict their risks for future diseases," he concludes.
