Type 2 Diabetes - Will Healthy HbA1c Levels in Diabetic Women Lower Birth Defects in Their Children?

Keeping blood sugar levels within a normal range is important for everyone, and this is especially true for pregnant women. Birth defects have been associated with elevated blood sugar levels. The glucose tolerance test involves having mothers swallow sugar and testing blood sugar levels at intervals for three hours. Researchers at Taibah University in Madinah, Saudi Arabia, compared HbA1c levels with birth defects to learn whether the HbA1c level, a simpler less time-consuming test, could be used to indicate the risk of birth defects.

The study, reported on in Primary Care Diabetes in February 2015, included 1180 healthy women in their first three months of pregnancy. It was found...

• children of women with diabetes had a 27.8 percent risk of malformations, compared to
• 9.8 percent in children of prediabetic women, and
• 3.0 percent for babies born to women with normal HbA1c readings.

From this information it was concluded HbA1c levels could be used to predict the risk of birth defects. They recommend further studies to integrate HbA1c readings into prenatal care.

Diagnosing and treating Gestational diabetes and pre-diabetes can be critical for infants. In December of 2013 the Iran Journal of Pediatrics reported a study of heart defects in the fetus of mothers with both conditions. The study, conducted at the Cardiovascular Medical and Research Center and other research centers in Tehran, Iran, included...

• 170 pregnant women with either Gestational pre-diabetes or Gestational diabetes, and
• 85 women with healthy pregnancies.

Echocardiography, which sees inside the heart, was performed on each fetus...

• among the fetuses who had diabetic mothers 5 (8.8 percent) had heart malformations.
• 1 fetus (1.17 percent) with a non-diabetic mother showed heart problems.

In April of 2013, the journal Pediatric Cardiology published the results of another study covering high blood sugar levels in pregnant women and congenital heart defects in their children. Researchers at Santa Maria's Hospital of the Sad Heart in Rovigo, Italy, examined 65 newborn infants whose mothers suffered Gestational prediabetes and diabetes.

It was found...

• 11 children (16.9 per cent), had a condition known as patent ductus arteriosus, which does not allow enough oxygen from the child's lungs to go into the blood.
• 4 children (6.2 percent) had malformed arteries carrying blood from the heart to the lungs.
• the wall in the center of the heart was overly thick in 22 (33.8 percent) of patients.
• 14 children had a heart without enough room for sufficient blood, and
• 17 percent had abnormal electrical signals controlling their heartbeats.