Healthy Lifestyle Essential After Gestational Diabetes
Women's Health News
Obie Editorial Team
Almost one of every ten pregnant women will develop gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), which usually strikes during the second trimester. Gestational diabetes can affect the baby as well as the pregnancy. Although GDM usually resolves itself shortly after childbirth, it has a lingering effect: Women who have GDM are at greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes the rest of their lives.
A recently published study indicates a woman can reduce her risk of type 2 diabetes after GDM by taking aggressive preventive measures that include lifestyle changes and treatment with metformin, a drug that suppresses glucose production in the liver. Metformin is the drug of choice for treating type 2 diabetes but it is not safe to take during pregnancy. For the best outcome, these protective measures should be started as soon after pregnancy as possible.
The Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study involved more than a thousand mothers under treatment at 27 clinics. The women were medically evaluated at the time they volunteered for the study and they were followed for the next ten years:
The study participants were randomly assigned one of three interventions:
Ten years later, at the end of the study, the outcomes included:
The women who had had GDM significantly reduced their risk of type 2 diabetes for a 10-year period by either taking metformin or undergoing aggressive lifestyle changes. Women who had not developed GDM during pregnancy significantly reduced their risk of developing type 2 diabetes by aggressive lifestyle changes alone. Metformin was not an effective preventive measure for these women.
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