Preconception stress may affect women’s fertility treatment
A new US study has uncovered that although stress levels need to be maintained during pregnancy they should also be monitored whilst conceiving.
To conduct the research, which was published yesterday, experts at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital analysed the link between self-reported stress immediately before conception among other women seeking fertility care.
Researchers looked specifically at blood glucose levels – a marker of heart health.
Findings, which can be found in full in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, show that maternal stress during preconception was associated with higher blood glucose levels. In addition, stress levels were seen to be higher amongst women using intrauterine insemination (IUI) – a type of fertility treatment in which better quality sperm is separated from those that are more sluggish – and women of higher socioeconomic status.
‘Stress prevalence has increased over the years, particularly for couples who are not able to conceive naturally,’ said corresponding author Lidia Mínguez-Alarcón, Ph.D., MPH, Bpharm, a reproductive epidemiologist in the Brigham’s Channing Division of Network Medicine and co-investigator of the Environment and Reproductive Health (EARTH) study. ‘We wanted to evaluate how this stress affects health during pregnancy, which can affect both the mother and child in the long term.’
Within the study, women had a medium age of 35 and were mostly from a white ethnic background (83%). 78% of the women involved reported never smoking and 64% went to on the study higher education. Following this, 300 women conceived using medically assisted technologies like intrauterine insemination (IUI) or IVF.
Against this backdrop, experts discovered that women who experienced higher preconception stress had higher, on average, glucose levels. Likewise, women who conceived through IUI had both higher stress and blood sugar levels than those who conceived through IVF.
Mínguez-Alarcón said: ‘Professional women with higher incomes and attained education levels may be employed in demanding, time-intensive jobs and ae often also responsible for balancing demands in the workplace with household duties and childcare.
‘It has previously been shown that women with a higher education level experience greater levels of job stress. Given that education level is positively associated with salary, it is possible that this explanation applies to women with higher incomes as well.’
However, although this research looks into stress levels during a part of pregnancy that may not have been fully examined before, researchers have claimed that their findings remain limited as the study comprises a group of mostly white women of high socioeconomic status.
Image: Drew Hays
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