[Determination of postpartum fructosamine for assessment of gestational diabetes--a suitable method?].

Postpartal screening of undetected gestational diabetes has proven to be difficult. Rapid decrease in diabetogenic hormones and normalisation of the former delayed insulin-response make it difficult to detect disturbed glucose tolerance in the puerperium. Therefore, glycolysated serum proteins offer the opportunity for retrospective diagnosis. They allow an evaluation of the patient's carbohydrate metabolism, retrospectively over several weeks. In this context, we were most interested in the significance of fructosamine. In a prospective study covering 12 months, 123 patients with several risk factors for gestational diabetes underwent a 100 g glucose tolerance test in the puerperium. Furthermore, we measured fructosamine and glycolysated hemoglobin. A carbohydrate intolerance could be detected by the oral glucose tolerance test in 22.7%. In 12.2% of the cases, glycolysated hemoglobin was found to be higher than 5.5%. Fructosamine levels were normal for all patients, with a mean value of 1.84 mmol/l. Even though fructosamine concentration was significantly higher (p < 0.05) in patients with a pathologic glucose tolerance, our study showed the oral glucose tolerance test to be better to detect unknown gestational diabetes than measurement of serum fructosamine.