Low birth weight as a risk factor for gestational diabetes, diabetes, and impaired glucose tolerance during pregnancy.

Small size at birth as a risk factor for the development of diabetes or other metabolic disorders has been described in numerous populations over the past 2 decades (1–12). Most studies dealing with children or nonpregnant adults have reported an inverse linear relationship between birth size and the prevalence of disease (1–4,6–10), but the relationship among the Pima Indians from Arizona has been described as “U-shaped” because the high risk is seen in individuals with high birth weight as well as low birth weight (5). Several reasons for this relationship have been proposed (13) and a similar finding was subsequently reported among schoolchildren in Taiwan (11). Since the 4th International Workshop-Conference on Gestational Diabetes Mellitus, where the association between a woman’s birth weight and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) or pregestational diabetes was first presented (14), there have been several similar reports in the literature. The purpose of this article is to review some of the recently published data on this relationship, which is well described in the general population but still less studied among pregnant women.