UVF, ICSI increase risk of stillbirth
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 3:03 am
The risk of stillbirth is increased in women who undergo fertility treatments, specifically IVF or ICSI.
However, whether the increased risk is due to the fertility treatments is still under investigation.
A study conducted by scientists at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark indicated that the risk of stillbirth is four times higher after fertilization by IVF and ICSI than with other fertility treatments or ‘natural’ childbirth. Based on their study of 20,000 pregnancies between 1989 and 2006, researchers found a risk factor of 4.3 per thousand births overall, but that factor increased to 16.2 per thousand among women who had received either IVF or ICSI treatments.
The leader of the Danish study, Dr. Kirsten Wisborg, noted that they also found results to be similar in circumstances where the couple was fertile or just took longer to conceive, or after other fertility treatments. This led to the suggestion that some aspect of IVF and ICSI technology or another unknown factor may be the cause of increased risk.
While the risk of stillbirth is relatively very low, researchers agree that much more study is needed to determine the actual causes and whether they are related to specific methods of fertilization or to other physiological variations in the individuals.
The idea that infertility alone may not be the contributing factor in the higher risk category is one that interests other researchers very much, and will hopefully lead to more conclusive findings in further studies.
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