Metabolic Effects of Breast Feeding in Women with Gestational Diabetes: A Review Study

Introduction: Gestational diabetes is associated with adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes and the prevalence tends to increase. The risk of developing gestational diabetes in the mother is up to 70% and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes is 7-fold increased over the course of 5 to 10 years. Due to the immunological properties of breastfeeding and its positive metabolic effects, exclusive breastfeeding is recommended. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the metabolic effects of breastfeeding in women with gestational diabetes.Materials & Methods: By searching the pubmed, web of science, Proquest and Scupos databases, observational studies on the metabolic effects of breastfeeding in women with gestational diabetes that had been done in the last 10 years (2010–2019) were reviewed. The search was performed using keywords breastfeed, diabetes mellitus, pregnancy, gestational diabetes mellitus, and finally 15 articles were selected and evaluated.Results: The results of studies found that in women with gestational diabetes who had longer breastfeeding, fasting blood glucose and triglycerides were significantly lower. In most of studies, BMI was significantly lower in women with longer breastfeeding with gestational diabetes mellitus.Conclusion: Breastfeeding is very beneficial for glucose metabolism and longer breastfeeding is associated with reduced risk of glucose intolerance and metabolic syndrome in women with gestational diabetes, and the likelihood of type 2 diabetes in these women decreases with increasing lactation duration. This effect is due to increased glucose tolerance resulting from increased insulin sensitivity and preservation of pancreatic beta cell function in women with gestational diabetes.