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Why do some women develop Gestational Diabetes?
Health Risk FactorsAssessment and ManagementSocio-Cultural Influencesdiabetesgestational diabetesglucose tolerance test

Why do some women develop Gestational Diabetes?

Dr Mushtaqur Rahman, Consultant Endocrinologist and Diabetologist talks about being weight as being an important factor. He talks about the body becoming relatively resistant to Insulin. During pregnancy, the placenta produces hormone which increase the blood sugar - normally insulin is released which brings this back down but in women with Gestational Diabetes the insulin does not act as it should.

Transcript (auto-generated)

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.

So, this is primarily related to women who may be overweight or obese or have a family history of diabetes and this is identifying those patients who are at risk of getting diabetes later in their life and have a significantly increased risk of that. But it's because they're not producing insulin enough or are resistant to the insulin, which is caused by possibly because of their weight, because if you're overweight or obese, especially if you have weight around the middle, you tend to be resistant to your insulin. But also during pregnancy, placenta produces hormones that cause your blood sugar to go up and ordinarily your body would produce more insulin to keep control of that blood sugar but it is unable to and these are the women who are identified as having gestational diabetes that's different to women who have diabetes existing prior to pregnancy. Now there are various groups of women who are at risk, such as those who are older, mothers, as is the trend now in the in the population in the UK, they may they may be overweight, obese, again, unfortunately, another trend in the UK, they may have a family history of diabetes or a previous history of gestational diabetes, they may belong to ethnic minorities who are who have an increased incidence of diabetes. Again, that can be related to family history, and also weight. So we use these groups to identify women who who may be at increased risk and they are then offered what's called a glucose tolerance test where you drink glucose and then we look at how your body's blood sugar changes from before the drink to after the drink and that we then categorize you as to whether or not you may have gestational diabetes. you

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