Gestational Diabetes Mellitus
Diabetes that first appears in pregnancy shares most of its known genetics with type 2 diabetes. A 2026 study across British, Finnish and Chinese populations added two genes of its own, ELL2 and ATRAID, and pointed at how the body regulates insulin.
What this condition connects to
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is high blood sugar that is first recognised during pregnancy. It is common, it usually resolves after birth, and it matters for both mother and baby while it lasts. Its genetics have been mapped more slowly than those of other forms of diabetes: earlier genome-wide studies found only a limited number of loci, and most of those overlapped genes already known from type 2 diabetes.
A cross-ancestry study, and two genes of its own
Zhao et al. 2026 combined genome-wide datasets from British, Finnish and Chinese populations to look for loci the single-population studies had missed. Using several independent ways of deciding which gene a signal acts through, the study linked two genes to GDM risk that had not been linked before, ELL2 and ATRAID. It also found three biological pathways enriched among the GDM loci: the regulation of hexokinase activity — hexokinase being the enzyme that takes the first step in using glucose — the regulation of insulin, and protein regulation.
This page holds 1 variant from that study, rs10758593 in GLIS3. GLIS3 is a transcription factor this site also meets on its benign nodular goiter page, where it appears for its role in thyroid development — one gene, reached from two different conditions.
In the news
2026-06-01 · Brito Nunes C, et al., Nature Communications 2026, PMID:42225636
Gestational diabetes affects about 14% of pregnancies and raises the mother's later risk of type 2 diabetes. The GenDiP Consortium's meta-analysis covers up to 38,305 women with gestational diabetes and 776,145 controls and finds 37 associated loci, 7 of them new, plus five new loci for blood sugar traits in pregnancy — all acting through the mother's genome rather than the baby's. Every locus overlaps type 2 diabetes or glycaemic traits outside pregnancy, which is the 'limited evidence' of the title; but 12 variants have stronger effects in gestational diabetes than in type 2 diabetes, four loci (G6PC2, CAST-PCSK1, HKDC1, FOXA2) have no genome-wide-significant type 2 diabetes association, GCK shows distinct causal variants, and MTNR1B's effect is amplified in pregnancy. Seven of the study's positions are on this site under other traits, including rs560887 (G6PC2), rs11558471 (SLC30A8), rs849134 (JAZF1) and rs4665972 (GCKR). It sits beside this site's gestational diabetes page, which is built on a separate 2026 study. PMID:42225636.
From our blog
Clinical detail
What is actually diagnosed and treated here
Gestational diabetes is diagnosed with a glucose tolerance test during pregnancy, not from a genotype. The variant on this page is not used by any guideline to screen for, diagnose or manage gestational diabetes.
Screening in pregnancy is offered on the basis of the test and of clinical risk factors. A genome-wide finding like this one describes a population, and says nothing about whether a particular pregnancy will be affected.
Related variants MyGeneLog™ checks for
What a 23andMe/AncestryDNA export or raw VCF can and can't tell you about Gestational Diabetes Mellitus comes down to these specific, well-studied positions — not a diagnosis.
Sources
Databases, guidelines and references
Quoting this page
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Gestational Diabetes Mellitus. MyGeneLog™. https://www.mygenelog.com/conditions/gestational-diabetes-mellitus
Questions about Gestational Diabetes Mellitus
What is gestational diabetes mellitus?
High blood sugar first recognised during pregnancy. It is common and usually resolves after birth, and it is diagnosed with a glucose tolerance test.
Is gestational diabetes genetically the same as type 2 diabetes?
Largely overlapping. Before 2026, most loci found for gestational diabetes overlapped genes for type 2 diabetes. A 2026 cross-ancestry study added two genes not linked before, ELL2 and ATRAID.
What did the 2026 study find?
Combining datasets from British, Finnish and Chinese populations, it linked ELL2 and ATRAID to gestational diabetes risk and found three enriched pathways: the regulation of hexokinase activity, the regulation of insulin, and protein regulation.
Can this variant tell me whether I will get gestational diabetes?
No. It is a population-level finding. Gestational diabetes is diagnosed with a glucose tolerance test during pregnancy, and no guideline uses a genotype to screen for it.
Free to reuse. This page's text is original writing from freely-available research, licensed CC BY 4.0 — reuse it, including commercially, with attribution to MyGeneLog™. It's general research-derived information, not medical advice or a diagnosis — see Terms of Use.