A new study from the UK Biobank has revealed that women with more children had a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), especially if they are obese or of Asian ethnicity. The research examined over 240,000 women. The findings were published in the Diabetes and Metabolism Journal.

Researchers followed 242,159 women aged 40 to 69 years with no history of T2DM at the beginning of the study. The researchers found that each additional child increased the risk of developing T2DM by 16%, with a hazard ratio of 1.16. However, this association was not uniform across all women.

Increased risk was most in Asian women and those with either general obesity or abdominal obesity. Those with normal body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) showed no significant increase in diabetes risk, regardless of how many children they had.

Weight-related factors significantly influenced the effect of having more children on diabetes risk. 49% of the effect was explained by waist circumference and 38% by BMI.