Gestational diabetes in Hispanics tied to anomalies. (High Rates Seen).

RANCHO MIRAGE, CALIF. -- Congenital anomalies were seen at a high rate in infants born to Hispanic mothers with diet-controlled gestational diabetes in a retrospective review of births at one center.

Just over 11% of the infants born to mothers with diet-controlled gestational diabetes had congenital deformities, compared with almost 4% of infants born to Hispanic mothers who were not diabetic. Rates of congenital anomalies were 9.4% in infants born to women with insulin-controlled gestational diabetes and 9.1% in those born to mothers with pregestational diabetes, Dr. Rosetta Hassan said at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Obstetrical and Gynecological Society.

"Our findings may be explained by the possibility that many of our subjects had diabetes prior to pregnancy and were unaware [of that fact] and therefore did not receive the diagnosis of diabetes until they became pregnant," said Dr. Hassan, director of the division of genetics in the department of ob.gyn. at Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Hispanic women have higher rates of bath pregestational and gestational diabetes than do African American or non-Hispanic white women, yet this is the first study to examine congenital anomalies in an exclusively Hispanic population.

The current study examined randomly selected charts of 361 Hispanic women who delivered at the inner city medical center between 1990 and 2000: 67 mothers with pregestational diabetes mellitus, 164 with gestational diabetes, and 130 Hispanic women whose pregnancies were not complicated by diabetes.

As expected, women with pregestational diabetes were the most likely to give birth to a baby with a major anomaly, such as numerous cardiac defects and limb and head anomalies.

Infants with cardiac ...