Coffee may make you or your partner sterile, new findings suggest. Coffee consumption has been linked to a multitude of health benefits like decreasing the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer and Parkinson's disease. However, new research reveals that drinking coffee and other caffeinated drinks can also decrease a person's chances of becoming a parent.
The latest study, conducted at the National Institutes of Health, revealed that a woman is significantly more likely to experience miscarriage if she and her partner have more than two caffeinated drinks a day.
Researchers stressed that men can also increase their partner's risk of miscarriage.
"Our findings also indicate that the male partner matters, too," said first author Germaine Buck Louis, director of the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. "Male preconception consumption of caffeinated beverages was just as strongly associated with pregnancy loss as females'."
It's not just before - the latest findings revealed that caffeine consumption during pregnancy can also increase the risk of miscarriage. Researchers noted that women who consumed more than two caffeinated beverages during the first seven weeks of pregnancy were also more likely to suffer miscarriage, according to researchers.
The latest study involved data from the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment (LIFE) Study, which involved 501 couples from 2005 to 2009. Researchers analyzed lifestyle factors of 344 couples with a singleton pregnancy from before conception to the seventh week of pregnancy. The study revealed that 98 of the 344 pregnancies looked at in the study ended in miscarriage.
Study analysis revealed that male and female consumption of more than two caffeinated beverages a day was associated with 1.74 hazard ratio for women and 1.73 hazard ratio for men.
Age was also a significant factor in determining miscarriage risks. The study revealed that women aged 35 or older, who were twice as likely to experience miscarriage compared to younger women, had a hazard ratio of 1.96.
However, taking multivitamins may decrease women's risk of miscarriage. Researchers found that women who took a daily multivitamin before pregnancy had a hazard ratio of 0.45, which is equivalent to a 55 percent lower risk of miscarriage. Women who continued to take vitamins through early pregnancy had a hazard ratio of 0.21, which is equivalent to a 79 percent lower risk of miscarriage.
"Couples' preconception lifestyle factors were associated with pregnancy loss, although women's multivitamin adherence dramatically reduced risk. The findings support continual refinement and implementation of preconception guidance," researchers concluded.
"Our findings provide useful information for couples who are planning a pregnancy and who would like to minimize their risk for early pregnancy loss," said Buck Louis.
The findings were published in the journal Fertility and Sterility.
