Assessing the effects of non-optimal temperature on risk of gestational diabetes mellitus in a cohort of pregnant women in Guangzhou, China.

Abstract Previous observational studies have shown that exposure to ambient temperature and air pollution were associated with the incidence of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). However, the susceptible time window of non-optimal temperature on GDM is still unknown, and the interaction with air pollution has not been examined. We conducted a prospective cohort study in Guangzhou, China to investigate the windows of susceptibility of temperature extremes and variability on the risk of GDM and to explore any interaction effect with air pollution. Daily maximum (Tmax), minimum temperature (Tmin) and diurnal temperature range (DTR) were obtained from Guangdong Meteorological Service. Distributed lag non-linear models with a logistic regression were applied to assess the effect of temperature extremes and DTR in different weeks of gestation on GDM. To examine the interaction effect, relative excess risk due to interaction index, attributable proportion and synergy index were calculated. There were 5,165 pregnant women enrolled, of which 604 were diagnosed with GDM (11.7%). Compared with a reference temperature (50th percentile of Tmax), we found that extreme high temperature (99th percentile of Tmax) exposure during 21st and 22nd gestational weeks was associated with an increased risk of GDM. Extreme low temperature (1st percentile of Tmax) exposure during 14th to 17th weeks increased the risk of GDM. We observed that per 1 °C increment of DTR during 21st to 24th weeks was associated with an elevated GDM risk. No interaction effect of temperature extremes or variability with air pollution on GDM were observed. Our results suggested that non-optimal temperature is an independent risk factor of GDM. The time window of susceptibility for extreme temperatures and DTR exposure on the risk of GDM generally occurred in second trimester of pregnancy. In the context of climate change, our study has important implications for reproductive health and justifies more research in different climate zones.