Comparison of glucose and a glucose polymer for testing oral carbohydrate tolerance in pregnancy.

Forty-six pregnant patients with potential diabetes were studied to compare the use of glucose and a glucose polymer for carbohydrate tolerance testing. The first 26 patients had a glucose tolerance test and a glucose polymer tolerance test in randomized order an average of one week apart. The mean tolerance curves and insulin curves were similar for both agents. Patients preferred glucose polymer to glucose because of a lower incidence of associated nausea. A second group of 20 patients was randomly divided so that patients had two glucose tolerance tests or two glucose polymer tolerance tests an average of one week apart. Comparison of the variability and correlation of the incremental areas under the paired tolerance curves showed that the reproducibility of the glucose polymer tolerance test exceeded that of the glucose tolerance test.