Objective:To measure serum chromium level in women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) from Chennai, South India.Materials and Methods:Thirty women with gestational diabetes, 60 age matched controls. Inclusion criteria: Gestational age 22-28 weeks, age group 20-35 years.Exclusion Criteria:Gestational age beyond 28 weeks, malnutrition or presence of infection. Serum chromium was measured using inductive couple plasma emission spectrometer.Results:Serum chromium levels of women with GDM, 1.59+/-0.02 ng/ml (range: 0.16-4.0 ng/ml) were lower than in controls (4.58+/-0.62 ng/ml; range 0.82-5.33 ng/ml) (P < 0.001). However, there were no significant differences among cases and controls when subdivided by parity.Conclusions:Women with GDM from a South Indian city had lower levels of serum chromium compared to pregnant women without GDM. Studies may be done whether chromium supplementation is useful in this group of women.

Pseudocholinesterase deficiency, commonly referred to as Butyrylcholinesterase deficiency, is a rare, inherited, or acquired condition that results in decreased or absent enzymatic activity. Pseudocholinesterase is a plasma enzyme that is responsible for the breakdown of succinylcholine and mivacurium, which are commonly used paralytic agents. People with this condition are usually unaware they have the disease, and the disease may not manifest until extubation at the end of surgery. These patients will usually have abnormally prolonged paralysis time and require mechanical ventilation well into the post anesthesia care unit because of failure to meet qualitative and quantitative extubation criteria. Treatment is mainly supportive with continued mechanical ventilation until return of muscle function because paralysis can last from minutes to hours and re-sedation to limit patient discomfort. We present two cases of prolonged paralysis after succinylcholine administration subsequently confirmed by laboratory testing to be pseudocholinesterase deficiency.