Diabetes and Poverty Related to Risk of ADHD

Thu, 05 Jan 2012
New research has connected gestational diabetes, children's financial status and their risk for developing attention and hyperactivity problems in later life.

Young children whose mothers got gestational diabetes, or diabetes during pregnancy, are doubly at risk of their peers developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by the age of six.

Children who come from poor families are also twice as likely to develop ADHD as six-year-olds in more, well to do families.

Children who had both risk factors, that is, mothers with gestational diabetes and were being brought up in poor families had a fourteen fold higher risk of developing ADHD in contrast to children with neither risk factor. Gestational diabetes impacts around 5 per cent of pregnant mothers in America.

It usually develops during the second or third trimester of pregnancy, which health experts realise as the same time period as when the growing baby has a crucial burst of brain and nervous system development.

Gestational diabetes triggers abnormally high blood sugar levels in women. This can adversely impact upon the development of the baby's brain and nervous system, which can cause problems for the child in its life time.

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