Glucose Tolerance, Fetal Growth, and Pregnancy Complications in Normal Women

ABSTRACT

Currently, gestational diabetes is often defined by the criteria of O'Sullivan, with those patients not included as gestationally diabetic being considered normal. Recently, Tallarigo and coworkers reported that serum glucose variations within the normal range could affect the birthweight of the neonate and also could relate to the frequency of complications often associated with diabetes in pregnancy. This study confirms the correlation between the plasma glucose concentration at 2 hours on the 100 gm, 3-hour glucose tolerance test and birthweight. When women demonstrating 2-hour glucose values of 139 mg/dl or less are compared with those demonstrating values 140 mg/dl or greater, fetuses from the group with higher plasma glucose values had higher birthweights (+211 gm) and were more often macrosomic (24.4 versus 8.6%). We were unable to identify any relationship between these small variations of glucose tolerance and pregnancy complications, such as delivery by cesarean section, birth trauma, pregnancy-induced hypertension, or congenital anomalies.