Diabetes during pregnancy is spiking in the US: study

Gianna Melillo
·2 min read

Story at a glance

  • Gestational diabetes is a pregnancy complication that can lead to adverse events among the mother and child.

  • New data document to what extent trends have shifted in recent years.

  • Increasing rates of gestational diabetes spell concern for the overall diabetes epidemic, as this condition can lead to type 2 diabetes in many cases.

About half of mothers with gestational diabetes will also subsequently develop type 2 diabetes, a chronic disease that costs the United States billions of dollars each year.

Now, new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) underscores the growing nature of this epidemic. Between 2016 and 2020 rates of women with gestational diabetes increased by 30 percent, according to information amassed from birth certificates.

In 2020, 7.8 women out of every 100 who gave birth in the United States had gestational diabetes. In addition to increasing the risk for type 2 diabetes, the condition also poses challenges for pregnant women who may develop cardiovascular disease later in life, be at greater risk of delivering via cesarean section, and at a higher risk of having gestational diabetes in subsequent pregnancies, authors wrote.

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For children born to mothers with the condition, gestational diabetes can lead to an increased risk of preterm birth and later development of type 2 diabetes, they added.

Previous research has also revealed an uptick in gestational diabetes rates throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This finding is supported in the current analysis as data show a 13 percent annual percent change from 2019 to 2020, compared with an average 5 percent increase reported from 2016 to 2019. National data on incidence rates for this disease first became available in 2016.

With regard to race, in 2020 incidence grew by 14.9 percent among non-Hispanic Asian women compared with a 6.5 percent growth seen among non-Hispanic Black women during the same time period.

Increasing incidence of gestational diabetes was associated with an older maternal age, greater pre-pregnancy body mass index and greater plurality (single vs twin vs triplet births).

“By state, for 2020, the [gestational diabetes] rate ranged from a low of 4.7% in Mississippi to a high of 12.6% in Alaska,” researchers wrote. Between 2016 and 2020, Connecticut, New Mexico and South Carolina saw the lowest percentage increase at 14 percent, compared with the greatest increase seen in Wyoming at 56 percent.

The jump in incidence rates recorded from 2019 to 2020 could be due to lifestyle changes adopted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, including decreased physical activity or weight gain, authors hypothesized.

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