Evaluating the Extent of Pregravid Risk Factors of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus in Women in Tehran

BACKGROUND Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is associated with maternal and fetal complications. Specific outcomes in previous pregnancies are considered as risk factors for GDM in the consecutive pregnancies. The aim of this study was to evaluate the pregravid risk factors of GDM in multigravid women. METHODS We conducted a retrospective cross sectional study on 114 multigravid women with GDM without previous history of diabetes and compared them with non-diabetic controls. We used modified criteria of Carpenter and Coustan for screening. Risk factors were obtained from medical records of individuals. RESULTS We found that women of 26 years and older who had previous neonates with birth weight more than 3800 gram and those affected with hypothyroidism or chronic hypertension were at risk for GDM. The difference of the number of preterm birth in GDM women and healthy controls was statistically significant (p=0.05). There was no significant difference between the numbers of pregnancies, parity, previous fetal and neonatal death and abortion number between patients and the control group. CONCLUSION Our results show that maternal age over 26 years, birth weight of previous neonate more than 3800 g, hypothyroidism, chronic hypertension and probably history of preterm birth are significant risk factors for GDM.