Empirically Derived Prepregnancy Dietary Patterns and the Risk of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus: A Case-Control Study

Background: Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), diabetes first recognizedduring pregnancy, is associated with complications for mothers and theiroffspring. This study aimed to identify empirically-derived dietary patterns inpregnant women and their associations with GDM. Methods: A total of 274pregnant women (138 women with GDM and 136 controls) participated in thiscase-control study. Anthropometric measurements were performed for all theparticipants. The participants dietary intake data was collected via a valid foodfrequency questionnaire. The major dietary patterns were obtained via principalcomponent analysis (PCA) based on participants’ actual food consumption data.The participants were divided into tertiles based on their adherence to eachdietary pattern and the associations between dietary patterns and GDM wereinvestigated via multivariate logistic regression. Results: The findings revealedthree major dietary patterns. Adherence to the “traditional pattern” wasassociated with an increased risk of GDM. This association remained significantafter adjusting for all confounding factors (highest vs. lowest tertile: OR=3.44,95% CI=1.54-7.69, P-trend=0.001). Similarly, women in the third tertile of the“western pattern” had an elevated risk of GDM compared with those in the firsttertile (third vs. first tertile: OR=1.96, 95% CI=1.02-3.80, P-trend=0.011). Incontrast, participants who adhered to a healthy pattern had a negative associationwith GDM risk (after adjustment P-trend