Mom’s High Blood Sugar Puts Infants At Birth Problem Risks

Mothers With blood sugar levels soaring high during their pregnancy, have a fair chance of putting their infants at risks of facing several birth problems as faced by babies born to women with diabetes, says latest study.

The study largely funded by the National Institutes of Health, although fails to identify a desirable blood sugar level in pregnant women. It was unable to pin point the exact level of sugar in the blood beyond which risks on the baby as detected in the study would be obvious.

The study however found that as the blood sugar levels increase in the body of the pregnant woman the baby becomes more susceptible to birth related problems. These could vary from a caesarean section delivery, to a large body size at birth, to problems like Dystocia (a condition occurring during birth, in which an infant's shoulder becomes lodged inside the mother's body, effectively halting the birth process).

The study titled Hyperglycemiadefine and Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes (HAPO) was carried out for 8 years over 23,000 pregnant women at 15 centers in 9 countries. The researchers were led by Boyd E. Metzger, M.D. Professor of Medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

To conduct the study, the researchers performed an oral glucose tolerance test on each woman, who was in the 24th to the 32nd week of pregnancy bracket. For the test, the women fasted, after which their blood glucose level was measured. Next, the women drank a glucose solution and then their blood glucose was measured at predetermined intervals. Women with blood sugar levels high enough to raise safety concerns were referred for treatment and were not included in the study. The remaining women were observed throughout the study until they gave birth.

The following were the findings of the study –
• The higher the blood sugar levels, the greater were the chances of a caesarean section.
• The higher the blood sugar levels, greater were the insulindefine levels of the baby at birth and lower were the sugar levels.
• Thus, the above two conditions enhanced the likelihood of such women to suffer from pre-eclampsia and such children to be born prematurely and with Dystocia.
• The women with the lowest fasting blood sugar levels gave birth to abnormally large babies roughly 5 percent of the times, while women with the highest blood sugar level gave birth to large babies 26 percent of the times.
• In addition, the study found that in the absence of factors like high age of the mother, obesity and high blood pressure, even if the mother suffered from high blood sugar levels, she was expected to have a caesarian delivery.

Diabetes is a condition which occurs when the body is unable to transfer blood sugar to the body tissues. These days women are commonly found to suffer from diabetes during pregnancy. Many develop pregnancy induced diabetic conditions also. Such women are themselves at a greater risk of fatally high blood pressure. Babies born to women with diabetes during pregnancy are said to have an increased risk of suffering from high BP and heart disease in their adulthood.