Prevalence of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus among pregnant women attending antenatal care clinic of St. Paul's Hospital Millennium Medical College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Background: The prevalence of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) varies worldwide among racial and ethnic groups, population characteristics (eg, average age and body mass index (BMI) of pregnant women), testing method, and diagnostic criteria. This study was aimed at determining the prevalence of GDM using the one-step 75-g Oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) protocol, with plasma glucose measurement taken when patient is fasting and at 1 and 2 h and identify associated risk factors among pregnant women attending antenatal care clinic at St. Paul Hospital Millennium Medical College (SPHMMC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Methods: Institution based cross sectional study was conducted from April, 2017 to October, 2017 at antenatal care clinic of SPHMMC among a randomly selected sample of 390 eligible pregnant women. Data were collected using a pretested questioner using 5% of the total sample size and later was modified accordingly to capture all the necessary data. Descriptive statistics, independent t-test and Binary Logistic Regression were used for analysis using SPSS version 23.0.

Results: The prevalence of GDM among the study population was 16.9%. Factors that affect prevalence of GDM were age group (AOR = 2.75, 95% CI: 1.03, 7.35 for 30-34 years old and AOR = 4.98, 95% CI: 1.703, 14.578 for ≥ 35 years old)and BMI (AOR = 2.23, 95% CI: 1.21, 4.11).

Conclusions: The prevalence of GDM among the study population is higher than previous reports in Ethiopia and even in other countries. This implies that these women and their newborns might be exposed to increased risk of immediate and long term complications from GDM including future risk of GDM and Type II Diabetes Mellitus.