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 Researchers followed 245 women with unexplained infertility who
sought treatment to help them conceive. With asthma, half of them
took at least 4.6 years to conceive, compared to about 2.7 years
without asthma.
Several studies have linked asthma to reproduction-related problems
in women, the study team writes in European Respiratory Journal,
though the connection is poorly understood.
“Despite subfertility often being seen clinically in asthmatic
women, a causal relationship between asthma and subfertility has
never been established,” lead study author Dr. Elisabeth Juul Gade
of Bispebjerg University Hospital in Copenhagen told Reuters Health.
“We showed that asthma has a negative influence on fertility as it
increases time to pregnancy and possibly reduces birth rate,
especially above 35 years of age,” Gade said by email.
While the study doesn’t prove asthma causes infertility, the
findings suggest that women with asthma should take steps to manage
symptoms before trying to conceive and also consider starting their
families at a younger age when they may not have as much difficulty
getting pregnant, Gade said.
To explore the link between asthma and infertility, Gade and
colleagues followed women between ages 23 and 45 who had
difficulties getting pregnant, including 96 women with asthma and
149 women without the condition.
At the start of the study, the women were 36 years old on average,
and generally had a healthy body weight.
The women received a variety of fertility treatments, including
artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization. They were
followed for at least 12 months, until a successful pregnancy, the
end of treatment or the conclusion of the study.
In addition to the longer timeline to conception, women with asthma
also had lower success rates. About 40 percent of the asthmatic
women achieved pregnancy compared to about 60 percent of the women
without asthma.
Among women experiencing what’s known as primary infertility, when
they have not yet given birth to any children, about 54 percent of
asthmatics and 66 percent of women without asthma conceived during
the study.
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With what’s known as secondary infertility, when women have one
child then struggle to conceive again, roughly 55 percent of the
women in both groups conceived during the study.
One limitation of the study is that some conception timelines during
fertility treatment relied on women to report on when they had
intercourse, which can make the data less reliable, the authors
note. It’s also possible the results might not be representative of
a broader population of women because the high cost of fertility
treatments may have limited participation to more affluent women who
could afford this intervention.
Asthma causes systemic inflammation in the lungs and it’s possible
this irritation may affect other organs and mucus surfaces of the
body such as the inside of the uterus, Gade said.
More research is also needed to determine whether asthma might
affect the development of ovum, or egg cells, in the early stages of
reproduction, Gade said. This might lead to difficulties with
implantation.
It’s still unclear exactly how asthma treatment might influence the
connection between this disease and infertility, Gade noted.
“We know that well-treated asthma is of importance for the pregnant
woman and the unborn child, but we have not been able to show
whether well-treated asthma is important for fertility,” Gade said.
“However, we believe it is, as a large degree of inflammatory
control is present when a patient is well-treated.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1WqWB8N European Respiratory Journal, online
February 12, 2016.
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