The more years spent trying to achieve pregnancy, the greater the risk of conceiving a child with neurological dysfunction,researchers found.
The time to pregnancy — used as a proxy for the severity of subfertility — was significantly longer for children who had minor neurological dysfunction compared with those with intact neurological function (median 4.1 versus 2.8 years, P=0.014), according to Mijna Hadders-Algra, MD, PhD, of the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands, and colleagues.
The difference remained significant after adjustment for gestational age, parental age, and parental education (OR 1.30, 95% CI 1.05 to 1.61) and largely reflected deficits in posture and muscle tone, the researchers reported online in the Fetal & Neonatal Edition of Archives of Disease in Childhood.
“This implies that factors associated with subfertility may play a role in the genesis of neurodevelopmental problems,” they wrote. “Further exploration of the associations between subfertility and health outcome in offspring is necessary for the correct counseling of subfertile couples.” Read full article.
