Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: In the last years, we have seen a high migration rate of people to Portugal. Not much is known about diet and lifestyle habits in some of these migrant women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). On the other hand, communication can be a barrier and health care access may be more limited. For this reason, it is important to investigate whether there are differences in outcomes between these two populations, in order to question the need to change our clinical approach at national level.

Aims: To compare maternal and neonatal adverse outcomes of GDM between pregnant women born in a foreign country and those born in Portugal.

Methods: The prevalence of GDM complications was evaluated in a cohort of 5874 native women compared with 1414 non-native women, resident in Portugal along years 2020–2022 (total n=7288), delivering 7349 live births. For this purpose, the database of the SPD diabetes and pregnancy group was used. The variables were analysed using T test and Chi square test in SPSS®.

Results: Non-native women had higher glycated haemoglobin values in the third trimester (5.5% vs 5.2%; P<0.001) and needed more insulin therapy (17% vs 14.5; P=0.028), with no significant differences in age (15–52 years) and pre pregnancy weight. Migrants with GDM were diagnosed later (19 vs 18 weeks, P=0.01) and burdened by a higher rate of abortion (0.9% vs 0.4%; P=0.018), non-spontaneous labour (61% vs 58%; P=0.023) and caesarean sections (40.7% vs 36.5%; P=0.012). Their new-borns were significantly larger for gestational age (GA) (16.4% vs 12.6%; P<0.001) and they had less small for GA babies (8.7% vs 10.4%; P<0.001). However, these differences did not impact neonatal morbidity.

Conclusion: GDM in non-native women seem to be worse managed, with this population showing higher abortion and caesarean delivery rates, and heavier babies. These results bring us to question the reasons for these differences and highlights the eventual need to adjust our approach with these women, given their heterogeneity.