18% of women develop gestational diabetes, a condition that occurs in expectant mothers who never had diabetes before they were pregnant, around week 24 of pregnancy. Wellness experts believe that gestational diabetes is caused by hormones from the placenta which interfere with the activity of insulin in your body when you’re pregnant, but the actual cause is unknown. If you have gestational diabetes, you cannot produce and use all the insulin you need to process glucose (sugar) properly, which can have a detrimental effect on the your baby if it goes untreated.
According to the 2011 report from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), five to 10% of women with gestational diabetes develop type 2 diabetes immediately after pregnancy, and any woman who has had gestational diabetes has a 35 to 60% chance of developing type 2 diabetes within the next two decades. Yet the new study found that 12.5% of the 843 Asian women studied developed type 2 diabetes within two months of giving birth, and the number of women who were later diagnosed with type 2 diabetes grew at a rate of 6.8% per year.
When the researchers evaluated both groups of women who developed type 2 diabetes, they discovered that obesity was a risk factor for all whose wellbeing was affected by the condition. The scientists also noted that women who developed type 2 diabetes soon after delivery had more distinct defects in beta-cell function, which is responsible for insulin production, and this may be partially explained by a genetic predisposition to diabetes. Soo Heon Kwak, MD, of Seoul National University Hospital and the study’s lead author, concluded that ‘the findings indicate as many as half of Asian women who had gestational diabetes will develop type 2 diabetes within eight years of giving birth.’