Abstract
The incidence of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) has recently increased because of an increase in the number of people who have adopted the Western lifestyle and a change in the diagnostic criteria for GDM in 2010. We herein examined factors that determined whether patients with GDM in our hospital required insulin therapy. Sixty-eight patients with GDM were categorized as those who required insulin therapy (40 patients) and those who did not and were under diet therapy (28 patients). We collected data regarding age, gestational week, body mass index (BMI), 75-g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) result, and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) level from patients in both groups at the time of diagnosis and performed a comparative study. The BMI, HbA1c level, 75-g OGTT results at 60 and 120 min, and number of GDM diagnostic criteria that the patients met were significantly higher in the group that required insulin therapy than in the diet therapy group. Our findings suggest that patients who do not have a high BMI and meet only the diagnostic criterion of fasting blood sugar level among the GDM criteria can be managed with dietary therapy alone.
