INTRODUCTION
Epidemiological studies have shown that children of women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) have increased risk to develop early cardiovascular disease in childhood and young adulthood (1, 2). We and others have shown that GDM is associated with fetal cardiac morphological and functional changes which are mostly noted in the right ventricle, which is consistent with the dominance of the right heart late in gestation (3-5). However, it remains unknown whether these cardiac changes persist in postnatal life and they identify the subgroup of children who are at increased long-term cardiovascular risk. To date only few studies have carried out postnatal assessment in offspring of mothers with GDM but these studies were confined to the neonatal period (5, 6).
The objective of this study is to determine whether cardiac functional and structural changes in fetuses of mothers with GDM persist in the offspring beyond the neonatal period.