Pregnancy outcomes worsening for diabetic women

Women with type 2 diabetes are at increased risk for several poor pregnancy outcomes compared with the general population, and with women who have type 1 diabetes, a Danish study shows.

Moreover, the end result of pregnancy for women with type 2 diabetes has actually deteriorated in the last 10 years.
Type 2 diabetes, being associated with obesity, has been on the rise in younger and younger people for several years.

"It is possible that the early onset of diabetes may be associated with increasingly poor pregnancy outcomes," Dr. Tine D. Clausen, from Copenhagen University Hospital, said in a statement.

"Certainly, it's time to pay closer attention to the healthcare being delivered to women who develop type 2 diabetes before or during their childbearing years," said the researcher.

The findings, which appear in Diabetes Care for February, are based on a study comparing the pregnancy outcomes of 61 women with type 2 diabetes from 1996 to 2001 with that of women with type 1 diabetes and those in the general population during the same period.

Women with type 2 diabetes were 4-times more likely than type 1 diabetic women to have a baby that died during delivery or shortly after, and 9-times more likely than women in the general population.

In addition, babies born to type 2 diabetic women were more than twice as likely to have a major birth defect.

The team also analyzed data on outcomes among type 2 diabetics between 1980 and 1992, to investigate trends over time. This showed that rates of infant mortality and major congenital malformations among such patients rose during the last decade.

The researchers say more studies are need to see why this is happening, saying it could be related to "the rising prevalence of the metabolic syndrome, a high proportion of women of non-Nordic-Caucasian background, or other unknown factors associated with type 2 diabetes."

SOURCE: Diabetes Care, February 2005.