Gestational diabetes likely to recur

Researchers from West Los Angeles Medical Center studied 541,000 population-based records from Kaiser Permanente Southern California to determine whether gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) recurred in subsequent pregnancies and whether recurrence was modified by race or ethnicity.

What they found was that the recurrence risk for GDM increased with each subsequent pregnancy, from 41% after the first pregnancy to 57% after 2 pregnancies complicated by GDM.

Data records between 1991 through 2008 were studied and then narrowed to include the first 2 pregnancies of 65,000 women and the first 3 pregnancies of about 13,000 women. The 4% of women who developed GDM during their first pregnancy were about 13 times (odds ratio [OR], 13.2; 95% confidence interval [CI], 12.0-14.6) more likely to develop it in their second pregnancy compared with women without GDM in their first pregnancy. Among third pregnancies in women who were diagnosed with GDM twice before, the risk rose to 26 times (OR, 25.9; 95% CI, 17.4-38.4) that of women without a history of GDM.

Getahun D, Fassett MJ, Jacobsen SJ. Gestational diabetes: risk of recurrence in subsequent pregnancies. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2010. Epub ahead of print.