The effectiveness of low trans-fatty acids dietary pattern in pregnancy and the risk of gestational diabetes mellitus

Background: gestational diabetes mellitus (gdm) is a common disorder in pregnancy. the association of trans fatty acids (tfa) intake and risk of gdm have been reported; it remains unclear whether dietary tfa can influence gdm risk. we examined the effect of low tfa dietary intakes during pregnancy on risk of gdm. methods: this randomized controlled trial was performed on 800 pregnant women who were randomly divided into 393 intervention and 407 comparison groups with gestational age ≥7 weeks. in the intervention group, the diet of pregnant women was designed in such a way that their daily intake of tfa content was less than1% but in control group, the daily intake of tfa content was not changed. the dietary intake was assessed using a 24-hour dietary recall questionnaire for three non-consecutive days at the beginning of the pregnancy before week 7, and at 13, 25 and 35 weeks. diagnosis of gdm was performed using a 3-hour glucose tolerance test with 100 g glucose at 24-28 weeks of gestation. results: 14 women in the intervention group (5%) and 31 women in the control group (8%) were diagnosed with gdm. chi-square test did not show any significant difference between two groups (p=0.08). cox model was used and the variables were examined in four multivariate models that none of the modals showed a statistically significant difference between the two groups regarding the incidence of gdm. conclusion: it seems that the diet with low trans-fatty acid content has no effect on the incidence of gdm.