The aim of the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study is to assess the efcacy of an intensive diet Type 2 diabetes is an increasingly common disease in most …
Diabetes During Pregnancy
Women of Color At Increased Risk
By Kauthar B Umar, MA
Closing the Gap, Diabetes September/October 2002
T
he pregnancy test is positive The ultrasound eliminates all of your worries Ten fingers, ten toes With this comes the an ticipation of motherhood Sorting through names and pick ing furniture for the nursery becomes your most enjoyable past time Yet, for some women–particularly women of color–an uneventful pregnancy can suddenly come to screeching halt An often routinely performed blood test at about six months can confirm the presence of high blood sugar or gestational diabetes GD Throughout the United States, especially among minority women, gestational diabetes is one of the most important health con cerns related to pregnancy–yet one that far too many women know little about GD is a type of diabetes that only pregnant women get Ap proximately seven percent of all pregnancies are complicated by GD– resulting in more than 200,000 cases annually Nationally, GD occurs more frequently among African Ameri cans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, and American Indians However, some local studies indicate that GD is extremely high in some Asian American
communities After pregnancy, 5 to 10 percent of women with GD are found to have type 2 diabetes Women who have had GD have a 20 to 50 percent chance of developing diabetes within 5 to 10 years following pregnancy Throughout a pregnancy, GD requires treatment to normalize maternal blood sugar levels to avoid complications both to the mother and child Women who go untreated may have a harder time with labor, and GD increases their chance of delivering surgically Compli cations that can arise in infants include: jaundice, hypoglycemia or low blood sugar level, and respiratory distress syndrome which makes it hard for them to breathe High-Risk Ethnic Groups Women who are overweight or obese, over age 25, have a family history of diabetes or has had gestational diabetes with a past preg nancy, and those whove had a very large baby or stillbirth in the past are at risk for GD Likewise, it has been determined that some women of color have a higher incidence of developing diabetes during preg nancy More specifically: African American Like type 2 diabetes, GD occurs more often in women of color, resulting in high cases of GD among African Americans In fact, according to the National
Institute of Diabe tes Digestive Kidney Disease NIDDK, several studies have shown that the occurrence of GD in African American women may be 50 to 80 percent more frequent than in White women
American Indian and Alaska Natives Both long- and shortterm consequences of diabetes during pregnancy are evident in American Indians and Alaska Natives Congenital abnormalities in infants born to women with type 2 diabetes are as common as those observed in women with type 1 diabetes Other complica tions seen in pregnancies in women with type 2 diabetes in cluded increased rates of toxemia or pregnancy induced hyper tension and perinatal mortality In fact, 45 percent of adult offspring of Pima Indian women who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes predating pregnancy developed diabetes by age 20 to 24 In comparison, only 14 percent of adult offspring of women without diabetes during pregnancy went on to develop diabetes by age 24 The strongest single risk factor for diabetes in Pima children was exposure to diabetes in utero Follow up studies of American Indian women with gesta tional diabetes found a high risk of developing subsequent dia betes: 275 percent of Pima Indian women developed
diabetes within 4 to 8 years, and 30 percent of Zuni Indians developed diabetes within 6 months to 9 years after pregnancy
Asian American and Pacific Islanders According to NIDDK, nationally, Asian American women seem to have rates of gesta tional diabetes that are similar to those of White women in the United States However, statistics based on an unpublished study conducted by Northern California Kaiser Permanente patients indicates that the prevalence of GD among Asian Americans was almost double the prevalence of GD among White women Hispanic/Latinos Mexican American women may be at par ticularly high risk for developing type 2 diabetes One study of 666 women with gestational diabetes in southern California found that each year an average of 12 percent developed type 2 diabetes after pregnancy Mexican American women, especially when they are overweight, have higher rates of gestational diabe tes than White women It has also been estimated that within 20 years of pregnancy, about half of the Latino women with gesta tional diabetes develop type 2 diabetes For more information, visit the National Institute of Child Health Human Development Web site at
http://wwwnichdnihgov
Office of Minority Health Resource Center
US Department of Health and Human Services
Source:scdhec.net
