Endocrine Abstracts

A case - control study was conducted on 2416 pregnant women referred to five university hospital clinics. The universal screening was performed with a 50g 1-hour glucose challenge test and those with plasma glucose level >= 130mg/dl, were diagnosed as having GDM if they had an impaired 100g 3-hour glucose tolerance test based on Carpenter and Coustan criteria. Overall 114 GDM patients were identified who were matched to 220 normoglycemic pregnancies in view of age, BMI, parity and gestational age. The American College of Obstetricians and gynecologists criteria (year 1986) was used as the definition for hypertension.

Mean values for age, BMI, parity in GDM and control groups were 29.09±6.13 vs 28.64±6, 27.43±4.33 vs 26.64±1.8,and 1.79 vs 1.52, respectively. In comparison to the control group, the GDM patients had a significantly higher rate of essential hypertension (8.8% Vs 3.2% , P<0.01), PIH (7.9% Vs 4.1 , P<0.05), preeclampsia (4.4% Vs 1.4% , p<0.05).

Essential hypertension and pregnancy induced hypertension and preeclampsia appears to be more common in women with gestational diabetes mellitus in comparison to the normoglycemic pregnancies.