Study suggests diabetic women with pregnancy should be careful

Study suggests diabetic women with pregnancy should be careful

Studies at the Newcastle University have suggested that the diabetic mothers-to-be have high risk of giving birth to children with a birth defect of congenital abnormality. According to
the journal, Diabetoligia, the risk of a child being born with a birth defect of whatever kind due to diabetic mothers is 7% and the risk of having a baby with a birth defect is 2% in females without diabetes.

The study was led by Ruth Bell from Newcastle University who studied 401,149 single-baby pregnancies between 1996 and 2008, 1,677 of them pregnancies of diabetics and reached the above
conclusions. According to the studies, the women with diabetes who have poorer backgrounds, or who did not take folic acid, were at higher risk of giving birth to an abnormal child.

The founder of the study, Iain Frame who is a research director at Diabetes UK said it had identified that the mother’s blood glucose level at time of conception was related to her risk
of having a baby with a birth defect, such as a heart abnormality. Diabetic women considering becoming pregnant should alert their medical team so that steps can be taken to minimise the risk.

He added that women who are diabetic should make sure to use contraception so that they do not become pregnant unexpectedly, Frame said. This is because some drugs taken by Type 2 diabetics
– 90% of the UK’s 2.9 million patients diagnosed with the disease – can cause problems for a developing foetus, and in such cases the women need to take higher than usual doses of folic acid.

Justin Warner of the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit said, “Although it has been known for some time that maternal diabetes is associated with an increased risk of foetal anomalies,
this study has, for the first time, quantified the relative risk. This highlights the importance of good diabetes control in mothers at the time of conception and the need for careful diabetes monitoring if pregnancy is being considered.”

According to Warner, Young diabetic women should be educated about the risk of having a child with an abnormality if they become pregnant.

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Posted by Zeeshan Gohar on Feb 28 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry