Women Health News

Previous studies that looked at the impact of reasonable caffeine consumption during pregnancy have created mixed results. Some showed no dissimilarity while others suggested too much caffeine could lower standard birth weight by 100-200 grams (3.5-7 ounces).

“In our study we found no effect from caffeine,” said Dr Bodil Hammer Bech, of the Institute of Public Health in Aarhus, Denmark.

Unlike further research projects in which women that had given birth were asked how much coffee they drank while pregnant, the Danish scientist’s monitored 1,207 pregnant coffee fans who were randomly chosen to drink either a caffeinated or decaffeinated brew during the second half of the pregnancy.

The women did not know which group they were in.

“We had two groups and we truly found no dissimilarity between the average birth weight for reasonable intake of caffeine -- about three cups,” said Bech, whose findings are reported online by the British Medical Journal.

“The difference in the weight of the babies among the two groups was 20 grams (0.7 ounce) and there was no disparity in the gestational age.”

In the caffeinated group, 4.2 percent of babies were born premature compared to 5.2 percent in women consumption decaffeinated coffee. The number of newborns who were small for their gestational age was nearly the same in both groups.

Bech said women who drink a lot of coffee typically smoke and drink more alcohol than other women’s, which might influence birth weight.

But because the women were randomized in the study, the other aspects that may have a consequence on the baby and the pregnancy were equal in the two groups.

In an earlier study, Bech and her team showed that too much coffee consumption, eight cups or more, could raise the risk of stillbirth.

“About three cups of coffee a day is OK but women with a higher drinking sshould be careful,” said Bech.

More trans fats a woman consumes, the more likely she is to be infertile, Dr. Jorge E. Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and colleagues found.

Trans fats are found in fried foods, commercial baked goods, packaged snacks and other sources, and are known to raise the risk of heart disease and diabetes. "Even for someone who's not trying to get pregnant, it is a very good suggestion to stay away from them," Chavarro told Reuters Health.

Trans fats can interfere with the action of a cell receptor concerned in inflammation, insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism, Chavarro and his team note in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Drugs that trigger the receptor have been revealed to recover fertility in women with a condition known as polycystic ovary syndrome.

To examine how trans fat consumption may affect fertility, the researchers analyzed data from 18,555 healthy women participating in the Nurses' Health Study. All were married and trying to get pregnant between 1991 and 1999.

For each 2 percent boost in the amount of calories a woman got from trans fats as an alternative of carbohydrates, the researchers found, her risk of infertility increased by 73 percent. The risk rose by 79 percent for every 2 percent of energy in trans fats if they replaced omega-6 polyunsaturated fats. And for every 2 percent of calories derived from trans fats instead of monounsaturated fats, the risk of infertility more than doubled.

For a woman eating 1,800 calories a day, 2 percent of energy intake in trans fats equals 4 grams, Chavarro noted. "It's not very hard to get 4 grams of trans fatty acids every day," he said. "It's really a small quantity of trans fatty acids that we observe having a noteworthy effect on infertility."

The Food and Drug Administration now needs manufacturers to state on their label if a food has a half gram of trans fat per serving or more, Chavarro noted, but foods with less than a half gram are tolerable to claim that they have zero grams of trans fat. To cut trans fats out of the diet completely, he added, people should sstay away from all foods that list hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils in their ingredients.

In the current study, reported in the journal Human Reproduction, the symptothermal method lead to an generally annual unplanned pregnancy rate of about 0.6 percent per 100 women, which is on par with the rates typically notice with contraceptive pills.

“For a contraceptive method to be rated as highly (effective) as the hormonal pill, there should be less than 1 pregnancy per 100 women per year,” lead author Dr. Petra Frank-Herrmann, from the University of Heidelberg in German.

Between women who always applied the symptothermal method accurately, the unplanned pregnancy rate was 0.4 percent. “Therefore, we sustain that the effectiveness of the symptothermal method is equal to the effectiveness of contemporary contraceptive methods,” she added.