A new study is challenging a long-standing assumption in obstetric care — and Obtelecare’s own Jeff Chapa, MD, National Medical Director of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, was tapped by Medscape to help unpack what it means for clinical practice.
The study
Oral corticosteroids are routinely prescribed in pregnancy, and clinicians have long worried about their effect on blood sugar. A cohort study in JAMA Internal Medicine, drawing on more than 1.3 million pregnancies from nationwide Korean health data, put that assumption to the test. The raw numbers seemed to confirm it — gestational diabetes occurred in 9.5% of corticosteroid-exposed pregnancies versus 7.36% of unexposed ones — but after adjusting for confounding factors, that gap largely disappeared.
Dr. Chapa’s take
Medscape turned to MFM and endocrine specialists to interpret the findings, and Dr. Chapa pointed to a distinction clinicians face constantly: transient, steroid-induced glucose elevation versus a true gestational diabetes diagnosis.
“Emerging evidence showing no significant link between oral corticosteroids and gestational diabetes is reassuring, though it doesn’t change our approach to monitoring. What it does affect is counseling,” Dr. Chapa told Medscape.
He also offered a broader risk framework: “Untreated or poorly controlled maternal disease often poses a greater risk to the baby than appropriately used medication. Managing the mother’s condition effectively is a key way to protect the pregnancy.”
Why this matters for teleMFM
Sorting out whether an elevated glucose reading reflects baseline risk, a temporary steroid effect, or a genuine new diagnosis takes more than a single data point — it takes a specialist reading the full clinical picture. That’s the expertise Obtelecare delivers to partner hospitals every day: board-certified MFM judgment, available on demand, for exactly these kinds of calls.
Read the full article on Medscape: Do Corticosteroids Really Raise Gestational Diabetes Risk?
