Diabetes During Pregnancy Increase Risk of Hyperactive Children

News Health Articles - Diabetes During Pregnancy Increase Risk of Hyperactive Children. Young Children are much more likely to experience problems concentration problems and hyperactivity if his mother had diabetes during pregnancy and was born into a poor household.

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is also called concentration problems and hyperactivity (GPPH) is a developmental disorder characterized by difficulty concentrating on one thing as well as increased motor activity are not uncommon and tend to be excessive (hyperactive). This disorder is characterized by various symptoms such as feeling anxious, restless, can not sit quietly.



Researchers monitored 212 children from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds who live in Queens, New York, where 10 percent of them had mothers who had diabetes during pregnancy. From preschool until the age of six years, a trained psychologist or doctoral students evaluate the symptoms of ADHD in each child each year.

In a report published journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, researchers found that children whose mothers had diabetes during pregnancy, or known as gestational diabetes, two times more likely to have ADHD at the age of six years.

Children whose parents are affected by gestational diabetes and raised in a less affluent households have a 14-fold risk of ADHD compared with children without risk factors. Previous studies showed that exposure to pesticides and lead in children at increased risk of ADHD.

"You should be aware that gestational diabetes can affect the fetus," said the researcher, Yoko Nomura, Ph.D., assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York City.

Gestational diabetes affects about 5 percent of pregnant women in the United States and generally develops during the second or third trimester of pregnancy, during the same period in which the fetus is experiencing rapid development of brain development.

Pregnant women with gestational diabetes have blood sugar (glucose) is a normal height. If the fetus is bombarded with excess blood sugar, energy normally used for the development of the nervous system transferred it to absorb the excess. As a result, the central nervous system so it does not develop properly. Growing up in poverty can also exacerbate the nervous system that basically is not good.

"When the baby was born in households of higher socioeconomic status, they have access to better medical care, higher intellectual activities, as well as having better food," said Nomura as reported by CNN on Tuesday (1/3/2012 ).

"In addition, low-income women can not control diabetes in pregnancy as expectant mothers are more prosperous," said Luigi Garibaldi, MD, clinical director of pediatric endocrinology at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.

This finding does not prove directly that gestational diabetes is a cause of ADHD, but researchers said the findings gave a message to the mother and the doctor that gestational diabetes can pose hidden dangers to the child after birth, especially if children grow up in an environment full of challenges.

"Developed diabetes during pregnancy itself may not be so bad. But if not controlled, it appears that there are consequences for brain development of children," said Garibaldi, who was not involved in the research.