Exposure to diabetes in the womb can put your baby at the risk of heart disease

Maternal diabetes can be problematic not just for the mother, but also for the foetus because it can make him/her vulnerable to heart problems.
diabetes and heart health
You can give your unborn child a heart disease if you are a diabetic. Image courtesy: Shutterstock
Team Health Shots Updated: 30 Oct 2023, 16:26 pm IST
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You can take multiple measures if you know your heart health is not right. But what if we tell you that if you are pregnant, then gestational diabetes is a risk factor of heart disease for your unborn child. 

According to a new research published in CMAJ, heart disease in young adults and teenagers may be related to exposure to diabetes in the womb.

A study of young adults and teenagers in Manitoba, Canada, whose mothers had diabetes during their pregnancies found the offspring had a 50% to 200% higher risk of developing heart disease before the age 35 than those who were not exposed in the womb.

Gestational diabetes is becoming the cause of concern for young adults
“These observations support our hypothesis that cardiovascular disease morbidity in adolescence and early adulthood is related to exposure to maternal diabetes in utero,” writes Dr Jonathan McGavock, Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba and Associate Professor at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, with coauthors.

diabetes and heart health

Researchers looked at data on more than 290,000 children born to almost 190,000 mothers in Manitoba between 1979 and 2005. Of the total children, 2.8% were exposed to gestational diabetes and 1.1% to pre-existing type 2 diabetes. Exposure to both types of diabetes became more common during the study period, a trend seen elsewhere in the world.

The three most frequent diagnoses among offspring exposed to diabetes were high blood pressure (8,713 people), type 2 diabetes (3,568 people) and ischemic heart disease (715).

Heart conditions are very much prevalent in kids if their mum has diabetes
“Using data for nearly all children born in Manitoba over a period of 30 years, we found that children born to mothers with diabetes in pregnancy were 30% to 80% more likely to develop a heart condition and 2.0 to 3.4 times more likely to develop a heart disease risk factor than children born to mothers without diabetes in pregnancy,” said Dr McGavock.

Furthermore, heart conditions and risk factors were diagnosed 2 years earlier in the children exposed to diabetes in the womb.

Previous studies have documented the increased risk of type 2 diabetes, but not cardiovascular disease, from in utero exposure to diabetes.

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The authors suggest these findings may be useful for preventive health practices.

“Screening children with in utero exposure to diabetes for cardiovascular disease risk factors might help to evaluate the future burden related to cardiovascular disease in the population,” the authors conclude. 

(With inputs from ANI)

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