Your Long-Term Type 2 Risk
Reviewed by CDE Mehandi Sharma · Updated
This is the part of GDM care most often left unsaid, and it is the most important thing to take away from the whole diagnosis.
About half of women who have had gestational diabetes go on to develop Type 2 diabetes. Estimates across studies range from around 15% to 70% depending on the population and how long they were followed, and the risk compared with women who did not have GDM is raised several-fold — some sources put it as high as sevenfold or tenfold.
That is a large number and it is worth sitting with rather than skipping past.
Here is what it does not mean. It is not a diagnosis, not a sentence, and not immediate. This risk plays out over years and decades, not months. And it is one of the most modifiable risks in medicine — this is essentially the same risk that prediabetes carries, and it responds to the same things.
What it does mean is that a GDM pregnancy has handed you unusually early warning. Most people who develop Type 2 diabetes get no notice at all. You have decades of advance notice and a clear reason to act.
Two things follow: get tested regularly for the rest of your life, and treat the changes you made during pregnancy as a starting point rather than something that ended at delivery.