Children born from in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments have shown a higher risk of developmental problems, but what is responsible for the heightened risk?
Low birth weight, premature birth and minor problems with brain development have all been correlated with fertility treatments, which include IVF as well as sophisticated insemination techniques. While it’s possible that the treatments themselves, which require manipulation of the egg, sperm and embryo outside of the woman’s body, could be contributing to changes in development, it’s also logical that the infertility that required the procedures in the first place might also be playing a role.
And in the latest study investigating the association, published online in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, researchers report that the latter may be largely responsible for the neurological differences documented among children born via fertility treatments.
The new study is very small, involving just 209 children who were born to parents who struggled to get pregnant. The findings, however, support previous data that found that techniques associated with IVF were not lniked with increased risk of neurological issues among children at age two who were born using these treatments.
In the current study, the researchers focused on a group of couples enrolled in a study of assisted reproductive techniques who were considered subfertile, or unable to conceive after 12 months of unprotected intercourse. The parents took anywhere from 1.6 years to a little over 13 years to get pregnant, producing 209 children. When they reached age two, the children were evaluated for mild neurological and developmental problems, including movement issues, posture, muscle tone and hand-eye coordination.
Seventeen of the toddlers showed minor neurological problems, and these children were more likely to be born of parents who took the longest to conceive. The median time to pregnancy for couples whose children did not show neurological issues was 2.8 years, while it those whose children did show minor problems took 4.1 years to conceive. Taking a longer time to get pregnant was associated with a 30% greater risk of having a child with mild neurological issues — even when the researchers accounted for other factors like parents’ age and education, which can also affect risk of such developmental abnormalities.