History of infertility relates to increased risk of gestational diabetes mellitus: a meta-analysis

Objective: History of infertility may be related to the development of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). However, studies investigating the relationship between history of infertility and GDM have yielded inconsistent findings. We performed a meta-analysis with all studies currently available to precisely estimate the associa-tion between history of infertility and GDM risk. Methods: The PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Wanfang databases were searched for relevant articles published up to Sep. 1st, 2016 without language restriction. Relative ratios (RRs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were calculated using STATA 12.0 software to evaluate the association of infertility and GDM risk. Results: Ten studies involving 430,715 subjects were included into our study. Overall, history of infertility was related to significantly increased risk of GDM (RR= 1.90, 95% CI 1.50-2.40, P< 0.001). Subgroup analyses by ethnicity and treatment of infertility further confirmed the findings. Sensitivity analysis showed that no single study materially influenced the pooled results in this meta-analysis. Conclusion: History of infertility may be a risk factor of GDM, particularly in patients receiving treatment for infertility.