Infertility Treatments Increase Risk of Heart, Pregnancy Complications: Study

A stock photo of a pregnancy test kit. KristinaKokhanova/Shutterstock

A study found that infertility treatments for women trying to have a baby may have increased the risk for heart and pregnancy complications.

“Advancing maternal age—specifically being age 35 and older—increases the risk of having or developing conditions, such as chronic high blood pressure, that increase the risk of pregnancy complications,” said study author Dr. Pensee Wu, with the Keele University School of Medicine in Staffordshire, in a news release.

The study was published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association, comparing 106,000 deliveries in which the child was conceived with assisted reproductive technology (ART) to 34 million who conceived children without the aid.

According to the American Heart Association, ART is a category of infertility treatments in which eggs or embryos are changed to improve a women’s chances of conceiving. Medications used to manipulate the timing of ovulation and surgery to fertilize and implant eggs in the uterus are also part of ART, the group says.

Among women who received the treatment, they saw an increased risk for vascular complications, including irregular heartbeats and kidney injuries, as well as pregnancy complications like placental separation, cesarean delivery, or having preterm births, the study found. Women who conceived without such treatments had fewer complications.

“Adverse pregnancy complications, such as high blood pressure during pregnancy, have now been established as risk factors for future cardiovascular disease,” Wu also said.

Women who used ART had a 2.5 times greater risk of kidney failure and a 65 percent higher risk of irregular heartbeat, the study found. They also had a 57 percent higher chance of placental abruption, which is when the placenta separates from the uterus before labor. Such women also have a 38 percent higher chance of having to get a cesarean delivery, the study found, adding that they also had a 26 percent higher chance of having the baby being born prematurely.

Chicago reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist Dr. Sigal Klipstein, who wasn’t involved in the study, told CNN that the research paper has some limitations because it didn’t compare different fertility treatments.

“A woman requiring a short course of fertility pills in order to conceive and a woman requiring multiple cycles of IVF (in vitro fertilization) were all lumped together in this study,” said Klipstein in a statement to the network. “There may be significant differences between groups based on type of fertility treatment, length of treatment, and time between treatment and conception,” she added.

The study evaluated women who gave birth between 2008 and 2016.