Can maternal diabetes cause birth defects in children? Find out!

Mothers who develop diabetes before or during pregnancy are more likely to have children who develop severe vision complications, according to findings published in Diabetologia.

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The research analysed the associations between maternal diabetes and the risk of high refractive error (RE). RE is one of the most common forms of visual impairment that includes both long and short-sightedness.

The long-term study looked at data from approximately 2.4 million people born in Denmark between 1977 and 2016. Of these individuals, over 56,000 were exposed to their mother's diabetes during pregnancy, including 0.9% with type 1 diabetes, 0.3% with type 2 diabetes and 1.1% with gestational diabetes.

As per the findings, children born to mothers with diabetes were at a 39% greater risk of high refractive error compared to children without diabetic mothers. Researchers also concluded that hypermetropia (long-sightedness) occurred more frequently in childhood and myopia (short-sightedness) was more frequent in adolescence and young adulthood.

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