ABSTRACT

Research reports that serum Homocysteine levels are raised in diabetes as well as gestational diabetes mellitus. We wanted to compare serum homocysteine levels between pregnant women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and healthy pregnant controls and to find the association of homocysteine with GDM. Study design was Cross Sectional Comparative. The study was conducted at Department of Physiology & Cell Biology, University of Health Sciences, Lahore 2018 to 2019. Serum homocysteine levels were measured in 60 pregnant women in their third trimester of pregnancy. Among 60 pregnant women, 30 had GDM and 30 were healthy controls with no GDM. The diagnosis of gestational diabetes was made on fasting blood sugar levels ≥ 95 mg/dL. Mann Whitney U test was used to compare the groups. Correlation was established using spearman rho correlation. Regression analysis was done to find the association of serum homocysteine with blood sugar fasting. There was significant elevation of serum homocysteine levels in cases (16.95±5.70μmol/L) as compared to controls (10.05±3.35 μmol/L) at p=0.000. Regression analysis showed statistically significant and positive relationship of homocysteine with GDM (r=0.66, p=0.000). It was also depicted by regression analysis that there is significant positive relationship between homocysteine and gestational age (r=0.73, p=0.000).

Keywords: Gestational Diabetes Mellitus, Homocysteine, Reactive Oxygen Species