IVF increases asthma risk

Children face an increased risk of asthma London – Caroline Kent A study has found that asthma is more common among children born after infertility treatment than among babies who have been planned and conceived naturally. The findings were published yesterday as part of the UK Millennium Cohort Study in Europe’s leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction. The study found that at the age of five, children born to parents who had either had to wait longer than a year before managing to conceive or who conceived via some form of assisted reproduction technology (ART) were significantly more likely to experience asthma. Children born after in vitro fertilisation (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) were found to be two to four times more likely to have asthma, wheezing or to need anti-asthmatics. However, the researchers stressed that their findings should not worry parents of ART children. A researcher at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford Dr Claire Carson said: “Although the children born after ART were more likely to be diagnosed and treated for asthma than other children, it is important to remember that in absolute terms the difference is quite small. Fifteen percent of the children in our study had asthma at the age of five. Although this figure was higher, 24 percent in the IVF children, it isn't much higher than the one in five risk for all children in the UK.”