Infertility Treatments (IVF/ICSI) Increase the Risk of Stillbirths

Recently a study was published in Human Reproduction, Europe's leading reproductive medicine journal. Study was conducted by Danish scientists. Study correlates an infertility treatment with increased incidence of stillbirths: study suggest findings that show that women who conceived naturally or after fertility treatments that did not involve IVF (in vitro fertilization) or ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) are compared to women who became pregnant with a single fetus after treatment with IVF or ICSI had a four-fold lowered risk of stillbirth.

More than 20 thousand first time pregnancies were observed, and moms to be were carrying one baby. Out of 20 thousand first time pregnancies there were more than 80 stillbirths, which places the overall risk of stillbirths at 4.3 per thousand pregnancies. The researchers broke down the statistics to see how many babies were stillborn to women who had experienced infertility problems.

The risk of giving birth to a dead baby was clearly far higher for women who conceived after infertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization and intracytoplasmic sperm injection, when compared to those who conceived naturally.

The scientists calculated following statistics:

women who conceived as in vitro fertilization and intracytoplasmic sperm injection had the highest risk of stillbirth; and the percentage is as high as 16.2% women who conceived after non-IVF fertility treatments, the stillbirth rate was 2.3% and this risk of stillbirth in sub-fertile women and women who conceived after non-IVF fertility treatment was not statistically significantly different from the risk in fertile women women who conceived naturally after a year of trying, had the following number of stillbirths: the infertile 3.7%, while the sub-fertile 5.4%

Another research concluded that risk of preterm deliveries is increased in women who conceived after IVF/ICSI treatments, compared to women who conceived naturally. This brings us to conclusion that not only that there are more and more problems linked to the tube babies, and most of them include metabolic problems, such as high blood pressure, abnormally elevated fasting glucose levels and excess body fat, there are also increased risks of having preterm deliveries and increased risk of still birth. Couples are turning to extremely expensive high tech baby-making technologies, but these could have some type of systemic problems affecting their fertility. The fact is that these problems are in the process of discovery or are still undiscovered. The fact is that the medical establishment should not ignore them.