High gluten intake during pregnancy linked to increased risk of diabetes in children
A new European study has found a link between eating a higher amount of gluten during pregnancy and an increased risk of children developing type 1 diabetes, although the researchers are cautioning that more research needs to be done before women make any dietary changes.
Carried out by researchers at the Bartholin Institute in Denmark in collaboration with researchers at Denmark’s Statens Serum Institut and published last Wednesday in The BMJ, the new large-scale study looked at data gathered from 63,529 pregnant women who were enrolled into the Danish National Birth Cohort between January 1996 and October 2002.
The women were asked to complete a food frequency questionnaire at week 25 of pregnancy in order to assess their diet and intake of gluten, which is the general name for the proteins found in wheat, rye, and barley.
Information on type 1 diabetes in their children was collected from the Danish Registry of Childhood and Adolescent Diabetes.
The findings showed that the average gluten intake among the women was 13g/day, and ranged from less than 7g/day to more than 20g/day.
When looking at the impact of gluten intake on the children’s risk of type 1 diabetes, the researchers found that the risk increased proportionally with the mother’s gluten intake during pregnancy, per 10g/day increase.
This meant that children born to women who had the highest gluten intake during pregnancy (20g/day or more) had double the risk of developing type 1 diabetes over a mean follow-up period of 15.6 years compared to those born to mothers with the lowest gluten intake (less than 7g/day).
The findings still held true even after the team had taken into account potentially influential factors, such as mother’s age, weight (BMI), and smoking during pregnancy.
However, the researchers stressed that as an observational study, no firm conclusions can be made about cause and effect and that further research is needed.
The authors also added that no changes to dietary recommendations on gluten intake in pregnancy should be made based on these findings, although they added that doctors, researchers, and the public “should be aware of the possibility that consuming large amounts of gluten might be associated with an increased risk for the child to develop type 1 diabetes, and that further studies are needed to confirm or rule out these findings, and to explore possible underlying mechanisms.”
