According to research from Denmark, children whose mothers have type-1 diabetes are likely to perform well in their school if their mother’s glucose levels were managed during pregnancy.
Dr. Florence Brown, director of Joslin Diabetes Center-Beth Israel Deaconess Diabetes and Pregnancy Program in Boston, revealed “Good diabetes control prior to and during pregnancy is important in other ways, as it lowers the risk of birth defects, preeclampsia, preterm delivery, large birthweight babies, and low blood sugar in the newborn.”
Further Brown added in mail “But when we see an association between maternal higher (blood sugar) in pregnancy and worse offspring academic achievement we cannot say that there is cause and effect. While the authors try to adjust for the effect of parental education on child educational performance, there may be other factors that influence offspring academic achievement.”
For research, the study authors checked the medical records to know women who had type-1 diabetes before and during pregnancy and examined school records to check the performance of their 707 children. Their performance was compared with the performance of 60,000 children whose mothers didn’t have diabetes.
The study found out that the children whose mothers had good control over blood sugar during pregnancy especially in third trimester, had above average grades when compared to the children whose mothers had diabetes during pregnancy.
The study also supported that mothers who had poor control over diabetes were born with children who performed worse in the school.
Moreover, women were known to manage diabetes when they were educated. A mother’s social, psychological and cognitive function in addition to her education plays an important role in managing diabetes and enriching kid’s education.
This study is only related to type 1 diabetes. Dr. Jorge H Mestman, director of the University of Southern California Center for Diabetes and Metabolic Disease, Los Angeles stated “I don’t know of any study of this type that was done with women who had gestational or type-2 diabetes. So we can’t apply these results to other types of diabetes.”
Further Mestman added that the study is provocative and the results are exciting but it needs to be repeated. Also, mothers with very poor blood sugar control may have had other complications, and that would need to be accounted for.
Source: http://www.phillyvoice.com/moms-diabetes-pregnancy-affect-kids-brains/
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