prevalence and risk factors for gestational diabetes mellitus in tehran

objective: to evaluate the prevalence of gestational diabetes mellitus (gdm) and its risk factors in tehran. materials and methods: from march 2002 to october 2004, screening for gdm was performed on 1804 women in tehran. all pregnant women were referred for a 50 g oral glucose challenge test (ogct) between 24th and 28th week of gestation. all subjects with an abnormal gct (blood glucose level ≥130 mg/dl) underwent an oral glucose tolerance test (ogtt) within 1 week after the abnormal screening test. the prevalence of gdm was estimated. results: the glucose challenge test was positive in 38.1% of cases .the prevalence of gdm for the whole cohort was 6.8%. about 78.6%   of our population were at medium or high risk for gdm and, therefore, would have been screened. the rate of gdm was significantly higher in women with a positive family history of diabetes, positive history of gdm, older age, multiparity, pre-pregnancy obesity, greater weight gain during pregnancy, history of infertility, chronic hypertension, history of stillbirth pregnancies and abortion. after logistic regression analysis, gdm diagnosis was significantly correlated with age (p<0.001), pre-pregnancy bmi (p=0.005), family history of diabetes (p<0.001), history of gdm (p=0. 002), chronic hypertension (p<0.001) and glucosuria during current pregnancy (p<0.001). conclusion: in populations with medium/high risks for gdm (like the iranian) universal screening is recommended to identify women with diabetes mellitus.