Regular Exercise During Pregnancy to Prevent Gestational Diabetes: a Randomized Controlled Trial

Objective: To assess whether exercise during pregnancy can prevent gestational diabetes and improve insulin resistance.

Methods: A total of 855 women in gestational week 18-22 were randomly assigned to receiving a 12-week standard exercise program (intervention group) or standard antenatal care (control group). The exercise program followed standard recommendations and included moderate-intensity to high-intensity activity 3 or more days per week. Primary outcomes were gestational diabetes and insulin resistance estimated by the homeostasis model assessment method. For the power calculation, we assumed a gestational diabetes prevalence of 9% in the control group and a prevalence of 4% in the exercise group (risk difference of 5%). Under these assumptions, a two-sample comparison with a 5% level of significance and power of 0.80 gave a study population of 381 patients in each group.

Results: At 32-36 weeks of gestation there were no differences between groups in prevalence of gestational diabetes: 25 of 375 (7%) in the intervention group compared with 18 of 327 (6%) in the control group (P=.52). There were no differences in insulin resistance between groups when adjusting for baseline values. Only 55% of women in the intervention group managed to follow the recommended exercise protocol. No serious adverse events related to physical exercise were seen, and the outcomes of pregnancy were similar in the two groups.

Conclusion: There was no evidence that offering women a 12-week standard exercise program during the second half of pregnancy prevents gestational diabetes or improves insulin resistance in healthy pregnant women with normal body mass indexes.

Clinical Trial Registration: : ClinicalTrials.gov, www.clinicaltrials.gov, NCT00476567.