Gestational Diabetes Mellitus: From controversies of yesterday to consensus of today

Abstract

From the days of O' Sullivan and Mahan, the diagnosis in women who developed hyperglycemia for the first time during pregnancy has been plagued with controversy.  It took sometime before the definition proposed by the American Diabetes Association, “any degree of glucose intolerance with onset or first recognition during pregnancy' was accepted (1). The definition subsists whether abnormal blood glucose was present before pregnancy but not detected and whether or not it resolves after delivery. Diagnostic criteria for Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) have been a subject of debate - do we use the same set of plasma glucose values as in non-pregnant women? Realizing that pregnancy is a unique state and harm may have occurred to the developing foetus at a lower blood glucose level than that for diabetes in the non-pregnant state, workers have now agreed on the criteria which set a lower blood glucose value for the diagnosis of GDM (1).