Pregnant diabetic women have three to four times more probability of delivering a child with birth defects than non-diabetic women, according to new government research.
The study is the largest of its own type, and gives the most latest and detailed information to date on birth defects that occur to infants of diabetic mothers, including heart defects, omitted kidneys and spine disfigurement.
Nearly 40 types of birth defects enlisted during study, which found to be considerably more common in the infants of diabetic mothers than normal or who were diagnosed with diabetes after conceiving.
The study’s list of diabetes-associated birth defects is astounding. It is much longer than was previously understood, said Janis Biermann, senior vice president for education and health promotion at the March of Dimes.
“It adds more information about the specific types of birth defects associated with pre-gestational diabetes and gestational diabetes,” he added.
Birth defects affect one out of 33 babies born in the U.S, and cause around one in five infant deaths. Causes of most birth defects are not known but some risk factors may involve including obesity, alcohol, smoking, infections, gestational and pre-gestational diabetes.
From decades, doctors know about the threat diabetes poses to pregnancies. Previous research has focused on threats to the infant by the excessive amounts of glucose (sugar) circulating in the womb of a diabetic mother. Studies upon rats and mice have clearly shown that high sugar level harms fetal tissue development, said Dr. E. Albert Reece, a study co-author and dean of the University of Maryland school of Medicine, who directs birth defects research there.
The study concentrated on the 13,000 births involving a major birth defect, in comparison with nearly 5,000 arbitrarily selected healthy births from the same locations.
Mothers were asked if they had been diagnosed with diabetes before or during their pregnancy. The researchers said those who were diagnosed during pregnancy either had pregnancy-induced condition called gestational diabetes or had undiagnosed pre-pregnancy diabetes.
The study found that in 93% of birth defect diabetes was not involved. About 2 percent of the infants with single birth defects were born to mothers who had pre-pregnancy diabetes. About 5 percent of the children with more than one defect were born to mothers with same condition. The percentage of healthy births was much lower in those mothers who were diabetic before pregnancy.
“Diabetes is not discriminating” in which birth defects it’s linked to, said Dr. Adolfo Correa, a CDC epidemiologist who was the study’s lead author.
