Screening for Gestational Diabetes Mellitus

Gestational diabetes mellitus was originally defined by O'Sullivan and Mahan1 in a group of 752 unselected pregnant women in Boston as indicated by two or more blood glucose concentrations that were more than 2 SD above the mean after a three-hour oral glucose-tolerance test. The investigators' initial interest was in the ability of such a finding to predict the development of diabetes in later life. Currently, gestational diabetes is defined more broadly as carbohydrate intolerance, with onset or first recognition during pregnancy and without reference to a specific testing procedure.2 Just as the definition has changed, so too has the . . .