IVF Linked to Child Asthma Risk
11.12.2018
Children born to parents who used fertility treatment may be at increased risk of developing asthma, according to a new study.
While previous research has linked the use of assisted reproductive technologies, including IVF, to asthma risk, it is unclear whether this is due to unidentified factors associated with the parent’s subfertility or the fertility treatments themselves.
To examine this, scientists from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo studied more than 500,000 children, combining birth and prescription data from national Norwegian health registries and the Norwegian Mother and Child cohort study.
For the study, childhood asthma was defined as the use of prescription asthma drugs in the preceding 12 months before the child turned seven.
The researchers found that just over four per cent of children had asthma but demonstrated that children born via IVF were 42 per cent more likely to develop asthma than children conceived naturally.
When these children were then compared with those whose parents had spontaneously conceived after more than 12 months, they were 22 per cent more likely to have asthma. This suggests that the increased risk of asthma is not completely explained by factors related to parental subfertility, but likely influenced in some way by the procedure of ART, said the researchers.
They speculate that “several steps in the assisted reproductive technology treatment may alter the natural course of the foetal development”, proposing factors such as the drugs used to induce ovulation and maintain the pregnancy, the type of embryo culture medium, the freezing and thawing of embryos, and the hormonal environment.