Screening the risk factors for methamphetamine use in pregnant women not receiving prenatal care.

OBJECTIVE: To develop a screening tool for the risk factors potentially indicating methamphetamine use in pregnant women who are not receiving prenatal care. METHOD: This prospective cohort, Institutional Review Board-approved study was performed at a university hospital in Thailand between January 2017 and January 2019. A screening tool was developed using data from 125 pregnant women not receiving prenatal care upon their first admission for childbearing at the hospital delivery room. Potential factors obtained from the patient's history, physical examination, and methamphetamine use in pregnancy or had a urine amphetamine test positive were entered into a logistic regression analysis. The discriminative ability of the screening tool was expressed by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) sensitivity and specificity, while bootstrapping was used for internal validation. RESULTS: The screening covered four factors: smoking (odds ratio 7.73, score = 2), drinking (3.81, score = 1), living with a spouse or friend who uses methamphetamine (17.28, score = 3), BP ≥ 130/90 mmHg (2.47, score = 1). The AUROC for the model was 0.87, 95% CI, 0.81-0.93 (SE: 0.03). A total points score ≥3 represented the best cut-off value, with a sensitivity of 81% and specificity of 82%. Across the bootstrapping, the C-statistic for the full screening was 0.86, 95% CI, 0.81-0.93 (SE: 0.03). CONCLUSION: A screening tool was developed with an excellent ability to discriminate the risk factors potentially indicating methamphetamine use in pregnant women not receiving prenatal care. Validation in pregnant women receiving prenatal care still needs to be performed.

Diagnosing Gestational Diabetes with a Probably Too Simplified Diagnostic Procedure Compared to International Criteria: The Indian Case Study.

Diagnostic procedures for the diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) are not uniformly defined worldwide. We retrospectively applied two diagnostic procedures (i.e., the IADPSG and the Indian) to the same pregnant women in order to compare the clinical characteristics and the prevalence of risk factors for GDM. Overall, 1015 pregnant women were evaluated. GDM was diagnosed in 113 cases (11.1%) by the IADPSG criteria and in 105 cases (10.3%) by the Indian criteria. The women diagnosed with GDM according to the IADPSG criteria had higher pre-gestational BMIs, higher previous macrosomia rates, higher first trimester fasting blood glucose levels, higher fasting and 1 h glucose levels after glucose load at OGTT, and lower 2 h glucose levels at OGTT compared with the women with GDM diagnosed according to the Indian criteria. Only 49.6% of the women who were diagnosed by the IADPSG criteria were also diagnosed with GDM by the Indian diagnostic criteria. For 47.8% of the women who were diagnosed by the IADPSG criteria, a diagnosis of GDM was missed by applying the Indian diagnostic criteria. Interestingly, 49 women were diagnosed with GDM by the Indian criteria but were normal according to the IADPSG criteria. Different diagnostic criteria could lead to different GDM detection rates with different practical approaches.