Prenatal Betamethasone Exposure and its Impact on Pediatric Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus: A Preliminary Study in a Spanish Cohort

Figure 1

Prenatal betamethasone exposure tends to reduce the percentage of subjects with type 1 diabetes. (a) Percentage of subjects with type 1 diabetes (T1D) in children prenatally exposed to betamethasone (continuous line, ) and in unexposed children (dotted line, ). Logrank Mantel-Cox test was used for statistical analysis. (b) Percentage of children in each gestational period: very preterm (28–32 week gestational age (GA), ); preterm (33–36 week GA, ); early term (37–38 week GA, ); term (week 39–41 GA, ); postterm (≥42 week GA, ). White bars represent the percentage of the betamethasone-unexposed (Bmet-unexposed) control subjects; light grey bars represent the percentage of betamethasone-exposed (Bmet-exposed) control subjects; dark grey bars represent the percentage of Bmet-unexposed subjects with T1D; and black bars represent the percentage of Bmet-exposed subjects with T1D. All percentages were calculated with respect to the total number of subjects in each gestational period. (c) Percentages of children prenatally exposed to betamethasone in relation to weeks of gestation. (d) Correlation between the percentages of children with T1D and weeks of gestation (Spearman’s correlation analysis).

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