Washington, Oct 9 (IANS): Women who eat fried food regularly before conceiving are at increased risk of developing gestational diabetes during pregnancy, says a new study.

Gestational diabetes (GDM) is characterised by abnormally high blood glucose during the pregnancy.

Women who have GDM are more likely to later develop full-blown Type 2 diabetes.

"Our study indicates potential benefits of limiting fried food consumption in the prevention of GDM in women of reproductive age," said Cuilin Zhang from Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Rockville, US.

The authors examined the association between pre-pregnancy fried food consumption, both at home and away from home, and the risk of subsequent GDM.

For the study, they included 21,079 singleton pregnancies from the Nurses' Health Study II (NHS II) cohort, which is an ongoing prospective study of 116,671 female nurses aged 25-44 years.

The researchers analysed fried food consumption at home and away from home separately, as well as total fried food consumption.

There was a significant association of GDM with fried food consumption away from home, as deterioration of oils during frying is more profound when the oils are reused -- a practice more common away from home than at home.

This may partly explain why we observed a stronger association of GDM risk with fried foods consumed away from home than fried foods consumed at home, concluded the authors.

The study appeared in the journal Diabetologia.