associated with many adverse pregnancy outcomes such
as macrosomia and CS delivery [12,14], moreover and
with recent developments in the research on fetal origin
of adult disease, GDM has been linked to long term health
effects on the mothers and their children including; increased
risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus, maternal
and childhood obesity and cardiovascular disease [15].
Few studies explored the relationship between GDM and
maternal obesity and found an increased prevalence of
GDM among obese women compared to those of normal
weight [6], in addition obese women who develop GDM
needed insulin to reach the target blood glucose level
compared to normal weight women who were controlled
by diet alone [16] and that the combination of obesity and
GDM was associated with the worse outcomes compared
to each condition alone [17,18]. A few studies investigated
the independent effect of obesity and maternal hyperglycemia
on the pregnancy outcome. Ricard et al., who
investigated the independent effects of obesity and GDM
on fetal weight, CS delivery and pregnancy- induced
hypertension, found that obesity had greater independent
effect on these adverse outcomes compared to GDM [18].
In their re- analysis of the HAPO study cohort, the research
group reached a similar conclusion to that of Ricard et al.;
however the greater impact of obesity was not consistent
across all the studied adverse outcomes [17].
The aim of this study was to investigate the independent
effect of GDM and obesity on the pregnancy outcomes
at term in a Saudi population.
Methods