Stillborn study on ART children

There is a marginally higher, but statistically insignificant, chance of stillbirth with a pregnancy resulting from some kind of artificial reproductive technology (ART) says a Nordic study.

The research group looked at records of over 60,000 births from the Nordic database of ART births and compared them to a control group of over 360,000 babies naturally conceived. All were singletons. In both groups, the stillborn rate was 0.4% (stillbirth is defined as death after 22 weeks of gestation). After matching data and adjusting for factors like maternal age and sex, the stillbirth rate was marginally higher (1.1 fold).

“Although the difference in risk of stillbirth is significant between the two groups and the risk is marginally higher with an overrepresentation of 8 per 1,000 pregnancies for singleton ART pregnancies, the overall risk of stillbirth is still low,” said Anna-Karina Aaris Henningsen, lead author from Righospitalet University Hospital of Copenhagen. “This means the individual woman need not be concerned about the risk of stillbirth during pregnancy.”

No difference in stillbirth rate was found for babies that went full term/40 weeks. “We believe that the difference in risk of stillbirth between ART and NC children seems to occur before 37 weeks of gestation,” said Dr Aaris Henningsen. “It is likely that some of the difference in risk of stillbirth is related to parental factors in the subfertile mother or father.”

Source: ESHRE, Medical News Today