Diabetes in Pregnancy and School-Age Developmental Outcomes for Offspring: A Statewide Retrospective Cohort Study

The impact of diabetes in pregnancy on offspring neurodevelopment is unclear. We investigate whether exposure to diabetes in utero is associated with developmental vulnerability or educational delay during primary school.

We used population-level pregnancy and birth data from 2009 to 2021 from Victoria, Australia, linked with standardized national assessments. Adjusting for a range of maternal and childhood covariates, we investigated whether diabetes in pregnancy was associated with an altered risk of developmental vulnerability compared with no diabetes in the first year of full-time school (ages 4-6 years), defined as below the tenth centile in two or more domains in the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC), and altered educational outcomes in grade 3 (ages 7-8 years), defined as the adjusted mean difference in overall z score in the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy test (NAPLAN).

Our study comprised 177,898 children who had linked birth and AEDC data, and 115,231 with linked birth and NAPLAN data, including, respectively, 16,363 (9.2%) and 7,532 (6.5%) exposed to diabetes in pregnancy. Following adjusted analysis, diabetes in pregnancy was not associated with an altered risk of overall developmental vulnerability compared with no diabetes (adjusted relative risk 1.02 [95% CI 0.98, 1.07]). Diabetes was associated with a marginally higher overall NAPLAN z score, but below the prespecified threshold for clinical significance (adjusted mean difference 0.04 [95% CI 0.01, 0.07]).

Diabetes in pregnancy was not associated with overall developmental vulnerability or a clinically meaningful difference in educational outcomes. This should provide reassurance for patients and their treating clinicians.