Pregnancy Complications Likely With Diabetes and Obesity Co-existing in Pregnancy
Pregnant women suffering from both type 2 diabetes and obesity are at high risks of delivery and newborn complications, according to a new research.
A new research found pregnant women suffering from both type 2 diabetes and obesity are at high risks of delivery and newborn complications.
To determine the influence of obesity and type 2 diabetes when the conditions coexist in pregnancy, Loralei Thornburg, M.D., senior study author and a high-risk pregnancy expert at the University of Rochester Medical Center and lead study author Kristin Knight, M.D., used clinical records and the hospital's birth certificate database to identify 213 pairs of women who delivered babies at the Medical Center between 2000 and 2008.
Each pair included a diabetic and a non-diabetic patient with approximately the same pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI). The majority of women in the study were overweight, obese or morbidly obese.
Using mathematical models and controlling for outside factors, such as age and tobacco use, researchers found that the patients with type 2 diabetes had overall worse pregnancy, delivery and newborn outcomes than their BMI-matched counterparts.
Specifically, diabetic patients had higher rates of preeclampsia, cesarean delivery, shoulder dystocia, preterm delivery, large for gestational age infant, fetal anomaly and admission to the neonatal intensive care unit.
"Women and their physicians need to be aware that each condition on its own increases risk in pregnancy, so when they coexist the situation is even more worrisome," said Knight, a maternal fetal medicine fellow at Rochester.
The study has been published in The Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine.
Source: ANI