الفهرس 
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Abstract
Women who are aware of GDM will adopt a healthier lifestyle, a better healthcare seeking pattern, better self-care, and thus prevention and early identification of the disease.
This study was conducted to investigate the level of awareness of GDM among all women. The goal of this study was to evaluate women’s knowledge of several areas of gestational diabetes mellitus, such as general condition knowledge, risk factors, diabetic diet, and consequences.
This cross-section study was conducted on 500 Women descriptive using questionnaire method in Sohag governorate among 5, over 6 months by random selection and they will be asked to answer the questions of prepared and copied questionnaire sheet.
A total of 70.6% of participants had knowledge about Gestational Diabetes Mellitus in general. General knowledge as other experiences or advices was the most common source of knowledge (40.5%) followed by internet (32%) then mass media (14.2%) and study (13.3%).
The mean total knowledge score was 9.62± 4.24. 69.6% of study participants showed good knowledge (≥ 9) while 30.4% of them showed low knowledge about Gestational Diabetes.
Higher age showed significant high awareness compared to less age (p<0.001). Also, there was significant proportional relationship between degree of awareness and occupation (p<0.001), gravidity (p<0.001), number of children (p<0.001) and level of education (p<0.003). Meanwhile, no significant relation was observed between degree of awareness and residence.
There was significant positive relation between degree of awareness and family history of diabetes (p=0.038) as there was significant increase of high knowledge score in cases who had positive history of family history of diabetes.
In addition, there was significant positive relation between degree of awareness and history of gestational diabetes (p<0.001) as cases who had positive history of gestational diabetes had significant higher knowledge score.
Conclusions and Recommendations
GDM awareness should originate in schools and colleges by including it into the course curriculum. It should target younger women and women with lesser levels of education.
Though the involvement of the media in promoting awareness of the disease is promising, it is concerning that only one-fifth of the women cited health-care practitioners as an information source. Doctors must educate medical workers, and both doctors and health-care workers must play a larger role in raising awareness among prenatal women. The issue of GDM should be included in the standard health-care education programmes for prenatal women.
Health professionals, particularly general practitioners and endocrinologists, must be proactive in starting conversations about conception planning and revisiting the matter on an annual basis, including providing advice on safe, effective contraceptive methods to avoid unwanted pregnancy.
Because GDM impacts two generations, knowledge of GDM’s long-term morbidity in the mother and newborn should be highlighted in order to enhance screening. This work sets the way for future research into newer techniques of raising awareness of GDM and associated problems, as well as identifying barriers to acquiring this knowledge. The first step toward preventing any disease is to become aware of it.
More clinical trials with multicenter collaboration are required to validate our findings.
Future clinical studies are needed with larger sample size.
Education should be provided to women so that they can evaluate their pregnancy and antenatal health. Regardless of the fact that such a strategy is promising for GDM prevention, it fails to take into account the degree of education among rural women who are equally vulnerable to the disease.
Maternal education to reduce the risk of developing GDM.
Limitations
This study is a single center study.