Hindawi Publishing Corporation Experimental Diabetes Research Volume 2011, Article ID 564316, 7 pages doi:10.1155/2011/564316 Clinical Study Cardiac Function in 7-8-Year-Old Offspring of Women with Type 1 Diabetes Maarten Rijpert, 1 Johannes M. P. J. Breur, 2 Inge M. Evers, 3 Harold W. de Valk, 4 Cobi J. Heijnen, 1 Folkert J. Meijboom, 2 and Gerard H. A. Visser 1 1 Department of Pediatrics, Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital, University Medical Center Utrecht, P.O. Box 85090, 3508 AB Utrecht, The Netherlands 2 Department of Pediatric Cardiology, Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital, University Medical Center Utrecht, P.O. Box 85090, 3508 AB Utrecht, The Netherlands 3 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Meander Medical Center, P.O. Box 1502, 3800 BM Amersfoort, The Netherlands 4 Department of Internal Medicine, University Medical Center Utrecht, P.O. Box 85500, 3508 GA Utrecht, The Netherlands Correspondence should be addressed to Maarten Rijpert, m.rijpert@umcutrecht.nl Received 21 May 2011; Revised 17 August 2011; Accepted 29 August 2011 Academic Editor: Barbara Alexander Copyright © 2011 Maarten Rijpert et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Offspring of type 1 diabetic mothers (ODMs) are at risk of short-term and long-term complications, such as neonatal macrosomia (birth weight >90th percentile), hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and cardiovascular morbidity in later life. However, no studies have been performed regarding cardiac outcome. In this study, we investigated cardiac dimensions and function in 30 ODMs at 7- 8 years of age in relation to neonatal macrosomia and maternal glycemic control during pregnancy and compared these with those in a control group of 30 children of nondiabetic women. We found that cardiac dimensions and systolic and diastolic function parameters in ODMs were comparable with those in controls. Neonatal macrosomia and poorer maternal glycemic control during pregnancy were not related to worse cardiac outcome in ODM. We conclude that cardiac function at 7-8 years of age in offspring of women with type 1 diabetes is reassuring and comparable with that in controls. 1. Introduction Despite good prepregnancy care and adequate maternal gly- cemic control during type 1 diabetic pregnancies, the risk of perinatal complications in the offspring, such as preterm birth and neonatal macrosomia (birth weight >90th per- centile), is still high compared with the general population [1]. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that children born after a diabetic pregnancy are at increased risk of cardi- ovascular and metabolic morbidity at later age [2], especially when macrosomic at birth [3, 4]. Intrauterine hyperglycemia during type 1 diabetic preg- nancy may lead to congenital heart defects, as has been shown in animal studies [5, 6]. In human studies, structural cardiac defects occur in 2–15% of newborn infants of type 1 diabetic women [1, 7–9]. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM, mainly interventricular septal hypertrophy) can be demonstrated in 25–45% of offspring of type 1 diabetic women [9–13]. Interventricular septal hypertrophy may be associated with functional cardiac changes during pregnancy as well as in the neonatal period [13–18] and seems to nor- malize within the first six months after birth [12, 13]. Despite the fact that possible mechanisms regulating the develop- ment and resolution of neonatal HCM have been investigated in diabetic rats, they are still unknown [19, 20]. It is therefore not clear whether neonatal HCM may be important in terms of residual cardiac pathology at later age. However, to the best of our knowledge no follow-up studies regarding cardiac structure or function have been performed in offspring of women with type 1 diabetes at later age. Because of the high prevalence of HCM in the neonatal period and the risk of later cardiovascular diseases in off- spring of type 1 diabetic women, we hypothesized that car- diac dimensions and/or function may be altered at later age. The objectives of this study were to evaluate cardiac dimen- sions and function at school age in children who were born