Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is the most common complication of pregnancy that affects 1-14% of all pregnancies. If not properly managed, GDM can be a devastating disease, leading to birth complications such as shoulder dystocia and neonatal hypoglycemia. GDM has many long-term implications as well, such as increased risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in both the mother and the offspring. Additionally, women with a history of GDM are at increased risk of recurrent GDM in a subsequent pregnancy and multiple episodes of GDM further increases a woman’s risk for these short and long-term consequences. For this reason, a diagnosis of GDM provides an opportunity to target GDM and T2DM risk factors to prevent recurrence of GDM and halt the diabetes disease course. Research has shown that diet and physical activity interventions provided after a pregnancy complicated by GDM can delay or prevent the onset of T2DM yet literature on prevention of recurrent GDM is lacking.
This thesis will propose a new intervention applied to the inter-pregnancy interval (IPI), designed to reduce incidence of recurrent GDM. The study will examine the effect of a diet and physical activity intervention for women with a recent pregnancy complicated by GDM on recurrence in a subsequent pregnancy and weight gain in the IPI. We hypothesize that our intervention will reduce incidence of GDM recurrence compared to the control group and that women in the intervention group will lose more weight compared to women in the control group. The results of this study will provide a background for further study on the prevention of GDM recurrence with the hope that prevention of recurrent GDM will prevent the short and long-term sequela of GDM.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/32966 |
| Date | 24 October 2018 |
| Creators | Crocker, Audrey |
| Contributors | Lee-Parritz, Aviva |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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