Pregnancy and diabetes scenario around the world: China

Abstract

Asians adopting a modern lifestyle have a higher risk of diabetes than their white counterparts living in high-income countries. Asian ethnicity is an independent risk factor for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), which is associated with a 2-fold increased risk of diabetes. In this burgeoning epidemic of diabetes, 40 million people in China are affected, with the most rapid rate of increase in disease prevalence in the young to middle-aged group. This rising trend of young onset diabetes is largely driven by the rising prevalence of childhood obesity/metabolic syndrome. In Asia, both low and high birth weights are independent risk factors for diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Apart from the high prevalence of maternal history of diabetes in women with diabetes, the metabolic milieu of GDM may have long-term effects on the metabolic profile and future risk of diabetes in the offspring. This complex interplay between environmental, genetic, and perinatal factors puts both mothers with a history of GDM and their offspring at risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome, thus setting up a vicious cycle of “diabetes begetting diabetes.” Given the public health burden of diabetes in low-income nations such as China, there is an urgent need to design and implement large-scale awareness and intervention programs targeted at these mother–offspring pairs to interrupt this transgenerational effect of diabetes and the socioeconomic and humanistic impacts.