Different intensities of glycaemic control for women with gestational diabetes mellitus

• Published in: Cochrane database of systematic reviews 2023-10, Vol.10 (10), p.CD011624
• Main Authors: Hofer, Olivia J, Martis, Ruth, Alsweiler, Jane, Crowther, Caroline A
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Blood Glucose; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2; Diabetes, Gestational - therapy; Endocrine & metabolic; Female; Glycemic Control; Humans; Hypertension, Pregnancy-Induced; Infant; Medical problems during pregnancy; Pregnancy; Pregnancy & childbirth
• ISSN: 1469-493X; 1469-493X
• DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD011624.pub3

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) has major short- and long-term implications for both the mother and her baby. GDM is defined as a carbohydrate intolerance resulting in hyperglycaemia or any degree of glucose intolerance with onset or first recognition during pregnancy from 24 weeks' gestation onwards and which resolves following the birth of the baby. Rates for GDM can be as high as 25% depending on the population and diagnostic criteria used, and overall rates are increasing globally. There is wide variation internationally in glycaemic treatment target recommendations for women with GDM that are based on consensus rather than high-quality trials. To assess the effect of different intensities of glycaemic control in pregnant women with GDM on maternal and infant health outcomes. We searched the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group's Trials Register, ClinicalTrials.gov, the World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (26 September 2022), and reference lists of the retrieved studies. We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs), cluster-RCTs, and quasi-RCTs. Trials were eligible for inclusion if women were diagnosed with GDM during pregnancy and the trial compared tighter and less-tight glycaemic targets during management. We defined tighter glycaemic targets as lower numerical glycaemic concentrations, and less-tight glycaemic targets as higher numerical glycaemic concentrations. We used standard Cochrane methods for carrying out data collection, assessing risk of bias, and analysing results. Two review authors independently assessed trial eligibility for inclusion, evaluated risk of bias, and extracted data for the four included studies. We assessed the certainty of evidence for selected outcomes using the GRADE approach. Primary maternal outcomes included hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and subsequent development of type 2 diabetes. Primary infant outcomes included perinatal mortality, large-for-gestational-age, composite of mortality or serious morbidity, and neurosensory disability. This was an update of a previous review completed in 2016. We included four RCTs (reporting on 1731 women) that compared a tighter glycaemic control with less-tight glycaemic control in women diagnosed with GDM. Three studies were parallel RCTs, and one study was a stepped-wedged cluster-RCT. The trials took place in Canada, New Zealand, Russia, and the USA. We judged the overall risk of bias to be unclear. Two trials were only pu