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Maternal diet could affect child’s risk for diabetes
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Women who consumed an unhealthy diet during the first trimester of pregnancy negatively affected their infant’s insulin resistance, thereby predisposing the child to diabetes. The data were recently reported in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
“It is vital to make mothers aware of the importance of eating well during pregnancy with a balanced Mediterranean diet,” researcher and professor of medicine in the department of nutrition at Complutense University of Madrid, Francisco J. Sánchez-Muniz, PhD, said in a press release. “We must also push for studies amongst the same population group in order to understand how children will develop over time and thus avoid, or at least mitigate, the development of high prevalence diseases within our society.”
Sánchez-Muniz and colleagues examined the cord-blood insulin sensitivity and resistance biomarkers in the offspring of 35 women. Their diets were measured based on their healthy eating index (HEI) score (>70 for adequate; or ≤70 for inadequate) and their 13-point Mediterranean diet adherence (MDA) score (≥7 for adequate; or <7 for inadequate).
The researchers found that patients who consumed the low HEI-score diets had low-fasting glycemia (P=.016), as well as the low MDA-score diets (P=.025). However, those who had low HEI-score diets delivered infants with high insulinemia (P=.048), as well as those who had low MDA-score diets (P=.049).
According to additional data, infants whose mothers were classified as “inadequate” were at risk for high insulinemia (P=.017); high glycemia (P=.008); and high HOMA-IR values (P=.103), compared with infants within the “adequate” HEI-score group.
Sánchez-Muniz and colleagues conclude that these data indicate poor diet can have a negative impact on neonatal glucose homeostasis and HOMA-IR values at birth. Further studies are warranted, they said.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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