The U.S. researchers revealed on Wednesday that Diabetic women who get pregnant are three to four times more likely to have a child with birth defects than other women.

According to their study, a variety of different birth defects are associated with mothers who have type 1 diabetes, also called juvenile diabetes, or type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease that is linked to obesity.

These comprised defects of the heart, brain, spine, limbs, kidneys and gastrointestinal tract, penile and ear abnormalities and cleft palate, the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

The study compared the cases of 13,030 babies born with birth defects around the United States and 4,895 babies without birth defects. The researchers determined which of the mothers had diabetes before becoming pregnant.  

It was found that about 2 percent of the children with single birth defects were born to mothers who had diabetes before they became pregnant. About 5 percent of the infants with multiple defects were born to mothers with that condition. In case of healthy births, the percentage of mothers who were diabetic before pregnancy was much lower.

“This study documents the fact that diabetes is associated with a wider range of defects than we had been aware of in the past,” said Dr. Adolfo Correa of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who led the study.