Gestational diabetes is a disease that only occurs in pregnancy, and if left unchecked, can cause serious damage to the baby and may even be life-threatening.
There are factors that predispose to suffer from it, including the mother's overweight before pregnancy. In this line, a recent research published in the magazine Diabetes care, has found that abdominal fat at the beginning of pregnancy related to the development of gestational diabetes.
It could be a risk marker to measure the mother's abdominal fat at the beginning of pregnancy by ultrasound.
When studying the cases of almost 500 women between 18 and 42 years old at St. Michael Hospital in Toronto (Canada), they found that those with the highest levels of abdominal fat were those who subsequently developed more frequently gestational diabetes between weeks 24 and 28 of your pregnancy, regardless of body mass index.
Between 11 and 14 weeks of gestation, visceral, subcutaneous and total fat in the abdominal area was measured. Visceral fat is an important risk meter, since it is the one that forms around the organs, and produces toxins that cause the body to become resistant to insulin. But also total fat is important for predicting diabetes.
Almost 60% of women who become pregnant are overweight, researchers say, and many of them have a family member with type 2 diabetes, so they are increasingly diluted as a risk factor, or rather, it is so widespread It is difficult to do a risk screening. In contrast, measuring abdominal fat could become a simple and economical way to predict gestational diabetes and take more thorough control of the pregnant woman.
Via The World
More information | Science Daily
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