Symptoms of gestational diabetes

Diabetes in pregnancy can hamper infant memory March 4, 2007

Symptoms of gestational diabetes Symptoms of gestational diabetes Symptoms of gestational diabetes

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Babies whose mothers had diabetes during pregnancy may be less able to form early memories than children whose mothers had normal pregnancies, a U.S. researcher said on Friday.

The study, presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, suggests that babies deprived of oxygen and iron before birth are not as able to develop early memories.

The need for iron doubles during pregnancy because it is used to make blood cells for the fetus. In pregnant mothers with diabetes, fluctuating glucose levels can result in iron deficiency, which can reduce the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen.

“When oxygen and iron deficiencies occur prenatally, they alter the development of memory,” said Tracy DeBoer of the University of California Davis.

DeBoer studied infants of diabetic mothers at 12 months and again at age 3 1/2. Her study suggested that memory deficits that appeared at one year persisted into early childhood.

She did not specify which type of diabetes the mothers had, but type-1, type-2 and gestational diabetes all affect blood sugar levels.

In the older group, the babies were shown a series of nine objects in three levels of difficulty. In the highest level of difficulty, babies whose mothers had been diabetic during pregnancy on average could recall two fewer objects than those whose mothers had a normal pregnancy.
The finding was consistent with the deficits measured in a simpler test of infants at 12 months, she said.

The notion that babies could recall anything at all in the first two years of life is relatively new.

Researchers have long thought that childhood amnesia — the inability to remember early life — was because babies could not form memories, but researchers at the meeting said new studies suggested infants could recall things as early as 4 months of age.

Duke University researcher Patricia Bauer told the meeting new studies suggest that infants do form memories by late in the first year that are similar to adults, but “the rate of forgetting is faster than in adults.”

Memories from early childhood that survive this process of forgetting tend to be particularly meaningful, she added.

Reuters

Obesity poses larger diabetes risk than inactivity February 26, 2007

Symptoms of gestational diabetes Symptoms of gestational diabetes Symptoms of gestational diabetes

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Although obesity and lack of physical activity both raise the risk of type 2 diabetes in women, obesity appears to be the more important factor, researchers report in the journal Diabetes Care.

Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues note that the relative contribution of obesity and inactivity to the risk of developing type 2 diabetes remains controversial.

To investigate further, the researchers monitored 68,907 women taking part in the Nurses’ Health Study, a large ongoing study that is evaluating women’s health over time. The women in the current trial had no history of diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer at study entry. During 16 years of follow-up, there were 4,030 incident cases of type 2 diabetes.

After allowing for age, smoking, and other diabetes-associated factors, the risk of type 2 diabetes increased progressively with increasing body mass index (BMI – the ratio of height to weight often used to determine if someone is overweight or too thin). The risk also increased with waist circumference, and decreased with physical activity levels.

Using women who had a healthy weight (BMI of less than 25) and were physically active as the reference group, the relative risks of type 2 diabetes were 16.75 in women with a BMI of 30 or more and were inactive. The corresponding risk in obese women who were active was 10.74. In women who were lean but inactive, the relative risk was 2.08.

Although both variables were significant predictors of type 2 diabetes, the researchers found that the association for waist circumference was substantially stronger than that for physical inactivity.

They researchers conclude that “the magnitude of risk contributed by obesity is much greater than that imparted by lack of physical activity,” and therefore “weight loss and maintenance of healthy weight should be emphasized as an eventual goal to prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes.”

Source:Reuters

Diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease relationship February 17, 2007

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – For older people with diabetes, the condition does not increase the likelihood that they’ll develop Alzheimer’s disease, according to a report in the medical journal Neurology. However, diabetes is associated with areas of brain damage called cerebral infarction which can impair mental capacity.

Dr. Zoe Arvanitakis from Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois and colleagues reviewed autopsy results from 233 older participants in the Religious Orders Study.

The team found just over one third of participants had one or more cerebral infarctions, and patients with diabetes were about 2.5 times more likely than others to have cerebral infarction.

In contrast, the levels of Alzheimer-type damage were similar between subjects with and without diabetes.

“This finding is interesting,” Arvanitakis said, “given that several recent large epidemiologic studies have found that diabetes increases risk of clinically-diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease by about two-to-three fold.”

“Diabetes increases risk of dementia, clinically-diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease, and is associated with cognitive impairment and decline in cognition, Arvanitakis pointed out. “Researchers need to better understand mechanisms underlying these relations. This understanding may contribute toward decreasing effects of diabetes on the brain.”

Sorce: Reuters

Diabetes risk and genes February 16, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers said on Sunday they had homed in on five areas of DNA that could account for 70 percent of the genetic risk for type-2 diabetes.

They identified four different areas of genetic variation that conferred a significant risk of developing diabetes and confirmed that a fifth area, a gene called TCF7L2 suspected in diabetes, is associated with the disease.

Writing in the journal Nature, the international team of researchers said their findings would help other scientists find causes and possible treatments for diabetes. They also said it showed it was useful to scan people’s entire genomes to look for disease-causing genes.

“Our new findings mean that we can create a good genetic test to predict people’s risk of developing this type of diabetes,” said Philippe Froguel of Imperial College London, who worked on the study.

Type-2 or adult onset diabetes is becoming more and more common around the world and is even being found now in children. It is associated with a rich diet and a lack of exercise.

“The rapidly increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus is thought to be due to environmental factors, such as increased availability of food and decreased opportunity and motivation for physical activity, acting on genetically susceptible individuals,” the researchers wrote.

Constantin Polychronakos of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and colleagues tested nearly 7,000 volunteers — most with diabetes and many with a known family history of the disease.

They used new gene chip technology that allowed them to quickly screen for many of the tiny differences in the complex genetic code of DNA.

They found four new areas that appear involved in insulin secretion and pancreatic development. One gene encodes a protein that helps move zinc ions around and is found solely in the beta cells, the pancreatic cells that make and release insulin.

Many of the diabetes-linked variations seem to be the “older” version of the DNA sequence, suggesting that human beings evolved to be susceptible to diabetes. This would support the theory that biological traits that helped human beings survive famines have become disease-causing in times of plenty, they said.

Source: reuters

Symptoms of gestational diabetes Symptoms of gestational diabetes Symptoms of gestational diabetes

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