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Babies born after IVF less likely to be male: study

More than 10 million babies have been born worldwide using assisted reproduction techniques.

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(Photo via Spencer Selover via Pexels)

By Alice Clifford via SWNS

Children born after fertility treatment are a fifth less likely to be male, a new study reveals.

But there is no evidence to show they are at any more risk of themselves having pregnancy complications than those conceived naturally.

However, girls produced following IVF are 86 percent more likely to have a lower health score directly after birth, according to the study.

Little evidence has been found to show that IVF babies are more at risk of pregnancy complications.

Although this method of conception is associated with fewer pregnancies, social rather than clinical factors may very well explain this.

The use of fertility treatment is increasing globally.

More than 10 million babies have been born worldwide using assisted reproduction techniques.

It's known that the resulting pregnancies are often more at risk of several pregnancy and birth complications.

However, it is not clear if these risks are associated with the treatment involved or the parent’s lower fertility.

Similarly, whether these risks affect the children conceived this way when they want to become parents themselves, isn’t clear either.

To explore this further, researchers drew on the reproductive histories of more than one million Norwegian residents born between 1984 and 2002 and all pregnancy registered with the Medical Birth Registry of Norway up to the end of 2021.

They focused on various key indicators of newborn and maternal health.

These included average birth weight, how far along the pregnancy they were, the weight of the placenta and the risk of congenital birth defects.

They also examined vital signs at birth, the need for neonatal intensive care, whether they had a cesarean section delivery and whether they used fertility treatments.

(Photo by Daniel Reche via Pexels)

Finally, they looked at high blood pressure and pre-eclampsia during pregnancy, whether the birth was premature and the baby’s gender.

Among 1,092,151 people born in Norway from 1984 to 2002, 180,652 were registered at least once as mothers and 137,530 as fathers.

Of these children born as a result of fertility treatment, 399 men of a total of 5083, eight percent, had a child.

Out of the 4763 women born from IVF, 553, 12 percent, had at least one registered pregnancy.

They found little evidence to show people who were conceived thanks to fertility treatment were more at risk of birth complications or went on to need fertility treatment themselves.

However, they did uncover that conception after fertility treatment was linked with an 86 percent increase in the risk of a low neonatal Apgar score among women who were conceived in this way.

The higher the Apgar score, the better the baby is doing after birth.

People who were conceived as a result of IVF were also nine to 12 percent less likely to have a registered pregnancy within the period between 2002 and 2021.

They also found that the odds of having a boy were 21 percent lower in this group.

Author Dr. Ellen Øen Carlsen, from the Centre for Fertility and Health at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, said: “People conceived by assisted reproductive technologies were not at increased risk of obstetric or perinatal complications when becoming parents.”

She explained: “Men and women who were conceived by assisted reproductive technologies had fewer pregnancies compared with their peers who were naturally conceived, which might be attributable to social factors.”

Limitations of the study included a small number of pregnancies among people conceived after IVF and a lack of information on potentially influential sociodemographic factors.

The findings also were not very diverse as they only looked at parents who were born in Norway.

Larger studies with a longer monitoring period and more direct assessment of time to pregnancy are needed to confirm their findings.

They will also help evaluate the pregnancy outcomes for older parents who were conceived after fertility treatment.

Dr. Øen Carlsen added: “Meanwhile, these early results are reassuring for the increasing number of adolescents and young adults who were conceived by [assisted reproduction] and are entering their reproductive years.”

The study was published in the journal BMJ Medicine.

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