Gestational Diabetes The risk of developing Type 2 diabetes after childbirth is 3.25 times higher in genetic high-risk groups

Sep 11, 2024

Most of the gestational diabetes improves after childbirth, but women with a high genetic risk of diabetes have a 3.25 times higher risk of type 2 diabetes after childbirth than the control group. It is expected that genetic information can be used to establish health management strategies for pregnant women.

Professor Kwak Soo-heon of the Department of Endocrine Metabolism at Seoul National University Hospital, researcher Choi Jae-won of the Department of Medical Sciences at Seoul National University University, and an international joint research team announced on the 11th that they analyzed the risk of developing type 2 diabetes according to the genetic risk of diabetes in 1,895 women who experienced gestational diabetes.

Gestational diabetes is a disease in which hyperglycemia occurs as insulin resistance increases due to hormonal changes during pregnancy. Women who have experienced the condition are at risk of giving birth to giant babies or developing complications during delivery.

In 90% of gestational diabetic women, blood sugar returns to normal after childbirth, and one to two in five develop type 2 diabetes within 10 years of childbirth. However, women with gestational diabetes are not only relatively younger than the general middle-aged high-risk group for diabetes, but there is a problem that it is not easy to predict the development of type 2 diabetes because clinical risk factors such as weight and blood pressure are not clearly shown.

The research team paid attention to the 'multi-genetic risk score', which quantitatively expresses the genetic risk of diabetes as a predictive indicator of diabetes occurrence.

Genome analysis was performed on 1895 gestational diabetic women from five cohorts (UKB, SNUH, KoGES, HAPO, and MXGDM) with various races and clinical settings to determine whether diabetes-related gene mutations were present, and the risk of type 2 diabetes was followed by calculating the multi-genetic risk score.

As a result, the risk of type 2 diabetes increased by 1.52 times as the multi-genetic risk score increased by 1 standard deviation. In other words, the multi-genetic risk score was an independent predictor of the risk of developing type 2 diabetes after childbirth in gestational diabetic women.

In particular, in the entire cohort, the top 10% of the polygenic risk score, 'diabetic genetic high risk group', had an average risk of type 2 diabetes 3.25 times higher than the remaining 90% control group.

Additionally, the research team confirmed that the multi-genetic risk score significantly improves the predictive power of type 2 diabetes. The prediction accuracy (AUROC) of the four previously known diabetes risk factors (onset age, family history of diabetes, BMI, blood pressure) was 71%, but the prediction accuracy improved significantly to 74%.

Professor Kwak Soo-heon said, `This result shows that women with gestational diabetes with high risk of type 2 diabetes can be selected relatively accurately through diabetes multi-genetic risk scores in various races and clinical settings.' `The results of this study are expected to serve as an important basis for establishing customized diabetes prevention and management strategies for pregnant women, such as regular postpartum examinations.'

The results of this study were published in the recent issue of the prestigious journal `Diabetes Care, IF;14.8)' in the field of diabetes.



Gestational Diabetes The risk of developing Type 2 diabetes after childbirth is 3.25 times higher in genetic high-risk groups
Professor Kwak Soo-heon (left) and Researcher Choi Jae-won


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