Research digest: updates on diabetes in pregnancy

Abstract

Pregnancy is well known to be a metabolic and vascular stress test, potentially providing an early clue to future health risks for women who succumb to specific pregnancy complications. For example, the occurrence of gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia predict higher risks of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, respectively. Gestational diabetes is particularly worrying since the risk for incident type 2 diabetes in these women has been shown to be substantially raised, sufficiently so to warrant yearly screening for diabetes, whereas cardiovascular risks in women suffering pre-eclampsia seem more modest. In the past, and still in many centres, diabetes screening in the first few months after birth in these women takes the form of oral glucose tolerance testing (OGTT), an approach that is less pragmatic than either fasting glucose or the even simpler HbA1c. However, other cardiometabolic risk factors are not routinely tested in these women.