The study, which was carried out by the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health found that diabetes rates continue to surge. Researchers analyzed 2,359 pregnant women with diabetes. They discovered that 1,707 had type 1 diabetes while 652 had type 2.
When they studied the outcomes of the pregnancies, they found that infant mortality rate was four times higher among the babies born of women with diabetes when compared to other women.
Among the diabetic women, the death rate was 31.7 per 1,000 babies for women with type 1 diabetes, and 32.3 per 1,000 babies for women with type 2.
Maggie Blott of London's King's College Hospital told the BBC, "Most women would be pretty aggressive about getting some sort of intervention if they knew they had a condition which significantly raised their risk of congenital abnormalities, but for some reason that message does not seem to have got across to people with diabetes."
