27 Apr More Complications in Pregnancies Conceived by Assisted Reproductive Technology
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Wu
Pensée Wu, MBChB, MD(Res)
Senior Lecturer, Honorary Consultant Obstetrician
Subspecialist in Maternal Fetal Medicine
School of Medicine, Keele University
Staffordshire, UK
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: We looked at outcomes in pregnancies conceived with assisted reproductive technology and compared those with pregnancies that were conceived naturally.
Using a hospital admissions database in the U.S. called the National inpatient sample between 2008 and 2016, we included >100,000 pregnancies conceived with assisted reproductive technology and 34 million naturally conceived pregnancies.
We found that women with assisted reproductive technology-conceived pregnancies had doubled the risk of acute kidney injury and arrhythmias (irregular heart beats). These women also had a 1-3-1.6-fold risk of preterm birth, Caesarean delivery and placental abruption (placenta separating from the womb).
We concluded that women should be informed of these risks during pre-pregnancy counselling.
MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report?
Response: This research is important for clinicians because women who undergo assisted reproductive technology to conceive may have cardiovascular risk factors that need to be assessed and treated before they become pregnant, which is in itself a big stress test for the heart. Clinicians should be aware of these increased risk of adverse vascular and pregnancy outcomes. This is so that they can communicate these risks and how to mitigate them to women who are thinking of undergoing assisted reproductive technology procedures to conceive.
MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this work?
Response: The next step for this research is to work out the underlying mechanisms for the associations we observed.
Also, we would like to know if lifestyle interventions for women with cardiovascular risk can improve their outcomes. Another question is whether assisted reproductive technology is linked with long-term cardiovascular disease.
MedicalResearch.com: Is there anything else you would like to add?
Response: Although we did not study the underlying mechanisms for the associations between assisted reproductive technology and adverse vascular and pregnancy outcomes, we suspect that the causes for these associations may be multifactorial. It may be due to the causes of infertility, such as thrombophilia or polycystic ovary syndrome. Another possible cause may be the assisted reproductive technology procedure itself.
Citation:
In Hospital Complications in Pregnancies Conceived by Assisted Reproductive Technology
Pensée Wu MBChB, MD(Res) [email protected] , Garima V. Sharma MD , Laxmi S. Mehta MD , Carolyn A. Chew‐Graham MBChB, MD , Gina P. Lundberg MD , Kara A. Nerenberg MD, MSc , Michelle M. Graham MD , Lucy C. Chappell MB BCh, PhD , Umesh T. Kadam MBChB, PhD , Kelvin P. Jordan PhD , and Mamas A. Mamas BM BCh, DPhil
22 Feb 2022
https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.121.022658
Journal of the American Heart Association. 2022;11:e022658
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.121.022658
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Last Updated on April 27, 2022 by Marie Benz MD FAAD