Drinking two cups of coffee a day in the weeks before conception, increases the risk of miscarriage, experts have warned. The risk exists if both the expectant mother or her partner drink high levels of caffeine, a new study revealed. However, scientists at the National Institute of Health (NIH), recommend that couples lower their caffeine consumption before trying for a baby.
The National Institute of Health, an agency of the United States (U.S.) Department of Health, is one of the world’s foremost medical research centres. Similarly, scientists at the NIH noted that women, who drink two caffeinated drinks during the first seven weeks of pregnancy are also more likely to miscarry. Miscarriage is the loss of a foetus before the 20th week of pregnancy.
The medical term for a miscarriage is spontaneous abortion, but “spontaneous” is the key word here because the condition is not an abortion in the common definition of the term. On the study, Dr. Germaine Buck Louis, director of intramural population health research, said: “Our findings provide useful information for couples who are planning a pregnancy and who would like to minimise their risk for early pregnancy loss.’
The team of NIH scientists analysed data from the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment Study – which examined the relationship between fertility, lifestyle and exposure to environmental chemicals.
The LIFE study enrolled 501 couples from four counties in Michigan and 12 counties in Texas, between 2005 and 2009.
The NIH scientists compared lifestyle factors – including cigarette use, caffeinated beverage consumption and multivitamin use – among 344 couples with a singleton pregnancy from the four weeks before they conceived, through the seventh week of pregnancy. Researchers measured the results using a ‘hazard ratio’ – which estimates the chances of a particular health outcome occurring during the study time frame.
A score greater than one indicates an increased risk of pregnancy loss each day following conception, and a score of less than one indicates a reduced daily risk. Of those 344 pregnancies, 98 of them – or 28 per cent – resulted in miscarriage. Women age 35 or older were nearly twice as likely to miscarry as younger women, the scientists found.
Additionally, both male and female consumption of more than two caffeinated beverages a day has increased the risk of miscarriage.
