Gestational diabetes is diagnosed with a blood sugar screening test. The best test to do would be an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test [OGTT]. The World Health Organization (WHO) has proposed that if the plasma glucose concentration is above 140mg/dL, 2 hours after a 75 gm glucose load, a diagnosis of GDM should be made.

Women with any of the following characteristics are at increased risk of being diagnosed with gestational diabetes, compared to women without any of these characteristics:

•   Family history of diabetes
•   History of unexplained prenatal loss [death of baby from 7 months of pregnancy to few days after birth
•   History of having given birth previously to a very large infant, a stillborn child, or a child with a birth defect
•   Obesity or overweight
•   Having too much amniotic fluid (polyhydramnios)
•   Women over 25 years of age
•   Hypertension

How to Manage GDM Management of diabetes patient pregnancies (if diagnosis is known before the pregnancy) should ideally begin before conception and requires a close collaboration between obstetricians and diabetologists. Assessment and management of associated disorders such as retinopathy, nephropathy, and chronic hypertension are required. In the case of GDM, the traditional management approaches include a combination of diet, exercise, intensive insulin regimens and home blood glucose determinations.