Gestational diabetes may lead to ADHD
A new study suggests that children are much more likely to be born with hyperactivity and ADHD related problems if their mother develops diabetes during pregnancy and if they are born into a low-income family.
The study was published this week in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. It shows that children whose mothers are diagnosed with gestational diabetes are almost twice as likely to meet the criteria of ADHD, according to CNN.
Living in a family with a low socioeconomic status also doubled the likelihood of finding ADHD in six year olds, but in children that have both low income families and a mother that developed gestational diabetes the increase in developing the attention disease is almost 14-fold, reports the Cleveland Leader.
Although the findings don’t prove that gestational diabetes directly cause ADHD, they show that parents and doctors should be aware that gestational diabetes can cause problems far after birth.
Mothers should be aware that gestational diabetes can affect her fetus,” Yoko Nomura, Ph.D., the lead author of the study and an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York City told CNN.
Gestational diabetes, according to CNN, develops usually in the second or third trimester, the same time in which the fetus goes through a big burst in brain development.
A low-income mother may not be able to control their gestational diabetes as much as a higher-income mother could.
The study had a few shortcomings, one being sample size, as well as not taking into account a large-scale family history of ADHD.
Despite this, CNN reported that the study shows that it is necessary to add gestational diabetes to a list of possible ADHD risk factors.
