Abstract
Results are presented from 128 oral glucose tolerance tests carried out 4 days (median) post partum in 129 women who gave birth to an infant with birthweight >4,500 g. Among these 129, only 1 overweight patient was found to be diabetic; testing revealed glucose intolerance in 7 patients, of whom 6 had returned to normal at re-examination. These data are comparable to those found in a general Danish population screening. Oral glucose tolerance tests based upon blood glucose concentrations 2 h postprandially, performed in the puerperium, cannot be recommended as a screening procedure for diabetes mellitus. By re-gressional analyses of data from 64 controls with normal-weight offspring, including six factors customarily related to birth weight, the importance of each risk factor could be estimated. The following simple equation revealed a correlation coefficient of 0.69: Estimated birthweight = 122 x menostasia in weeks + 370 x average weight of siblings in kg + 43 x weight gain in pregnancy + 6 x maternal weight before pregnancy -3,655.