Diabetes during pregnancy makes the fetus later react to sounds

When a pregnant woman has gestational diabetes, the fetus tends to react more slowClinical Endocrinology & AMP;Metabolism.

Gestational diabetes is a form of diabetes that can develop during pregnancy and when developing, blood sugar levels of pregnant women are higher than normal.For every thousand pregnant women, 92 have gestational diabetes, according to data from the American endocrinology society.

"It is the first time that a study shows that the mother's gestational diabetes can affect the speed with which her fetus reacts to stimuli after a meal," says one of the authors of the study, Hubert Preissl, of the hospital of the hospital ofThe University of Tubinga, in Germany, as well as the German Center for Diabetes Research and the Metabolic Diseases Research Institute of the Munich Helmholtz Center at the University of Tubinga.

"The results provide important clues about how the diagnosis of the mother's gestational diabetes can affect her child's brain activity," adds the author of this study, in which 40 pregnant women participated, including 12 who had gestational diabetes.

After a fast night, the women drank a solution of 75 grams of glucose and the scientists of this study measured the blood sugar of women before, an hour later and two hours after ingestion.

Each time the mother's blood sugar occurred, scientists used an auditory stimulus to cause an answer in the fetus, generating a sound is generated by a speaker and using a plastic tube to transmit it to a point in the abdomenof the mother near the baby's ear.Using a non -invasive neuroimaging technique called fetal magnetoencephalography, the researchers measured each response from the fetus to the auditory stimulus.

An hour after mothers consumed the sugary solution, experts saw that the children of women with gestational diabetes were slower when reacting to sounds than women without condition.Babies of women who do not have gestational diabetes responded in an average of 206 milliseconds while those of mothers with gestational diabetes responded in 296 milliseconds on average.

"The results tell us that the cerebral function of the fetus is influenced by the mother's metabolism,"of obesity and diabetes of the child in the future. "