A new study published online in Fertility and Sterility claims that a woman is more likely to miscarry if she and her partner consumed more than two caffeinated drinks daily during the weeks before conception. The study also reports that women who drank more than two caffeinated beverages daily during the first seven weeks of pregnancy were also at higher risk to miscarry.
The National Health Institutes of Health and Ohio State University, Columbus research team investigated the lifestyle habits of 344 couples, including their cigarette use, caffeine consumption and multivitamin intake. They observed these participants weeks before conception until seven months into the pregnancy.
“Our findings provide useful information for couples who are planning a pregnancy and who would like to minimize their risk of early pregnancy loss,”asserts study author Germaine Buck Louis, the director of the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Twenty-eight percent or 98 of the pregnancies miscarried. The team found that caffeinated beverage consumption was associated with a hazard ratio of 1.74 increased miscarriage risk for females and 1.73 increased risk for males.
“Our findings also indicate that the male partner matters, too,” Buck Louis added. “Male preconception consumption of caffeinated beverages was just as strongly associated with pregnancy loss as females.”
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