Effect of high parity on the occurrence of prediabetes: a cohort study

Abstract Objective. To assess the effect of parity on the occurrence of prediabetes defined as an abnormal fasting plasma glucose (5.6-6.9 mmol/l), an abnormal 2-hour oral glucose tolerance test (7.7-11.1 mmol/l), or both, before 12 weeks gestation or at least 6 weeks after delivery. Design. Retrospective cohort study. Setting. Nested on a community trial Delaying the Development of Diabetes Mellitus type 2 (AMAL study) in Oman. Population. 532 women with a total of 3,196 pregnancies. Methods. We conducted sets of Cox proportional hazard regression analyses: crude, age-adjusted and full models which adjusted for maternal age, education, family income and year of delivery. Main outcome measures. Hazard ratio (HR) of the effect of parity on prediabetes. Results. We enumerated 258 cases of prediabetes over 8,529 person-years of follow up. In the crude model, high parity (≥5) pregnancies carried a higher risk of prediabetes than low parity (