The first-trimester of a woman’s pregnancy could be the time in which she is most susceptible to developing gestational diabetes when exposed to pesticides used in agriculture.
Pesticides and diabetes have been clearly linked in the past, but gestational diabetes and pesticides have not been studied before, according to researchers. A team at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in North Carolina found that developing gestational diabetes could come about through exposure to pesticides.
The study, which was published in leading journal Diabetes Care, investigated over 11,000 women. 57 per cent of those women who had the disease reported mixing or applying pesticides during their lifetime, with the risk increasing significantly for those who had applied or mixed during the first trimester of pregnancy.
The authors concluded that true understanding of the situation remains limited.
