serum ferritin concentration in early pregnancy and risk of subsequent development of gestational diabetes: a prospective study

Background: elevated serum ferritin concentration is associated with insulin resistance and diabetes. recently it has also been described in gestational diabetes mellitus (gdm). objective: a prospective study was done to determine whether there was a relationship between serum ferritin concentration in early pregnancy and the risk of gdm. materials and methods: a study was performed on 1,384 pregnant women with gestational age of 12-16 weeks. a blood sample was obtained for measurement of ferritin in the first trimester. diagnosis of gdm was done by 75 gr oral glucose tolerance test between 24-28 wk. results: women who developed gdm had a higher concentration of serum ferritin than women who did not develop gdm (p=0.01). a ferritin concentration of 45 ng/ml was calculated to be the 75th percentile for healthy pregnant women. considering this level 32% in the gdm group and 25.2%of normal subjects exhibited high ferritin levels (p=0.01). the risk of gdm with these high levels of ferritin was 1.4-fold higher than that for subjects with lower concentrations. the odds ratio was 1.4 (95% ci= 1-1.87) (p=0.01). after adjusted for age odds ratio was 1.38 (95% ci=1.02-1.86) (p=0.03) and after adjustment for pre-pregnancy body mass index, the adjusted odds ratio was 1.31 (ci= 0.96-1.79) (p=0.08). after multivariable adjustment (age and body mass index), the adjusted odds ratio was 1.3 (0.95-1.8) (p=0.09). conclusion: high serum ferritin can be regarded as a significant risk factor for the development of gestational diabetes.