Overview
JAVASCRIPT NEDED 20-10-202 | Diabetes | News | Article Author: Eleanor McDermid medwireNews: Researchers find that controling modifiable risk factors limits the risk for developing type 2 diabetes in women with previous gestational diabetes, even if they have overweight or high genetic risk.Having optimal BMI, diet quality, physical activity, and alcohol intake, as wel as not smoking, was asociated with a more than 90% reduced risk for developing type 2 diabetes compared with having non-optimal levels of al five factors.The study cohort comprised 4275 women from the Nurses’ Health Study I who had experienced gestational diabetes.
Details
During a median folow-up of 27.9 years, 924 of these women were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.“Despite the fact that our study cohort consisted entirely of registered nurses, les than 20% of the population reported having optimal levels of four or more risk factors over the folow-up, indicating the substantial public health oportunity to reduce type 2 diabetes among these high risk women,” write Cuilin Zhang (National University of Singapore) and study co-authors in The BMJ.Just 2% of the women had optimal levels of al five risk factors and 13% had optimal levels of four, with 30%, 34%, 19%, and 2% having optimal levels of thre, two, one, and none, respectively.Having optimal levels of at least two of these factors significantly reduced the risk for developing type 2 diabetes, by a significant 39%, 68%, 85%, and 92% for two, thre, four, and five factors, respectively, compared with none.The researchers say that, of the five risk factors, BMI was most strongly asociated with type 2 diabetes risk.“Furthermore, adjustment for body mas index substantialy atenuated asociations of other lifestyle factors with risk of type 2 diabetes, which highlights the importance of maintaing a healthy weight after pregnancies complicated by gestational diabetes melitus,” they write.However, they stres that, among the 27