Endocrine Abstracts

Aim: The aim of this study was to compare maternal and neonatal outcomes between Israeli Arab and Jewish women with GDM not controlled with lifestyle modification.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of women with GDM who were not controlled with lifestyle modification and were followed and gave birth in a university affiliated medical center between 2005 and 2015.

Results: The study included 343 women, 45 (11.8%) of them Arabs. There were no differences in the baseline characteristics between the two ethnic groups including age, gravidity, parity or pre-pregnancy body mass index. There were 41.85% Jewish women with good glycemic control compared to 31.4% of the Arab women (P=0.197). A similar fraction gave birth by caesarian section or assisted labor (%17.8 of the Arab versus 15.1% of the Jewish women, P=0.669). There were no differences in composite outcome comprised of pre-eclampsia, caesarian section due to diabetes, macrosomia and neonatal hypoglycemia (68.9% for the Arabs vs. 62.4% for the Jewish women P=0.42).

Conclusions: Our study did not find differences in maternal and neonatal outcomes of Arab and Jewish population of women with GDM controlled with glucose lowering agents. These results are not consistent with previous published data. It is possible that the Arab population in our study shares comparable socioeconomic elements with the Jewish one and has access to similar medical care. Other possible explanation is a small sample size of this study.