THURSDAY, Dec. 5, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Children of mothers with diabetes have increased rates of early-onset cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to a study published online Dec. 4 in The BMJ.
Yongfu Yu, Ph.D., from Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, and colleagues examined the correlations between maternal diabetes diagnosed before or during pregnancy and early-onset CVD in offspring during their first four decades of life in a population-based cohort study. Data were included for all 2,432,000 live-born children without congenital heart disease in Denmark during 1977 to 2016.
The researchers found that CVD was diagnosed in 1,153 offspring of mothers with diabetes and 91,311 offspring of mothers who did not have diabetes during up to 40 years of follow-up. The overall rate of early-onset CVD was increased for offspring of mothers with diabetes (hazard ratio, 1.29). Increased rates of CVD in offspring were seen in association with pregestational diabetes and gestational diabetes (hazard ratios, 1.34 and 1.19, respectively). Offspring of mothers with diabetes complications had more pronounced increased rates (hazard ratio, 1.60). Offspring of mothers with diabetes and comorbid CVD had a higher incidence of early-onset CVD (hazard ratio, 1.73); this was not due to the interaction between diabetes and CVD on the multiplicative scale.
“A history of CVD or diabetic complications in women with diabetes should be taken into account in designing public health strategies that target offspring at increased risk of early onset CVD,” the authors write.
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