Diabetic women who are attempting to become pregnant are at risk of a miscarriage or of giving birth to a malformed child should they not control their blood sugar levels, so researchers have warned.
The recent study, which has been published in Nature Medicine , has discovered that high glucose levels make embryonic cells destroy themselves prior to implantion in the womb.
Such a loss of cells goes to explain higher rates of malformed babies and miscarriage among diabetic women .
Diabetic women produce eight times as many malformed babies as do other women.
Should their blood sugar levels be under control when a baby's organs form, the malformation rates remain two to three times higher than normal.
The study highlights that understandably many diabetic women think that they will go to the doctor once they are pregnant.
However, by then the damage has been done. Therefore, it is very important for diabetic women to tell their doctor they would like to get pregnant in order that they can be monitored closely from thereon.
Significant cell death can cause a miscarriage as well as malformations.
