Couples’ pre-pregnancy caffeine consumption linked to miscarriage risk

NIH | MARCH 29, 2016

A woman is more likely to miscarry if she and her partner drink more than two caffeinated beverages a day during the weeks leading up to conception. Similarly, women who drank more than two daily caffeinated beverages during the first seven weeks of pregnancy were also more likely to miscarry.

Coffee. Image Credit: Elias Shariff Falla Mardini/Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

However, women who took a daily multivitamin before conception and through early pregnancy were less likely to miscarry than women who did not.

The findings provide useful information for couples who are planning a pregnancy and who would like to minimize their risk for early pregnancy loss.

For the current study, researchers compared such lifestyle factors as cigarette use, caffeinated beverage consumption and multivitamin use among 344 couples with a singleton pregnancy from the weeks before they conceived through the seventh week of pregnancy.

Of the 344 pregnancies, 98 ended in miscarriage, or 28 percent. For the preconception period, miscarriage was associated with female age of 35 or above, for a hazard ratio of 1.96 (nearly twice the miscarriage risk of younger women). The study authors cited possible explanations for the higher risk, including advanced age of sperm and egg in older couples or cumulative exposure to substances in the environment, which could be expected to increase as people age.

Both male and female consumption of more than two caffeinated beverages a day also was associated with an increased hazard ratio: 1.74 for females and 1.73 for males.

The researchers saw a reduction in miscarriage risk for women who took a daily multivitamin. During the preconception period, researchers found a hazard ratio of 0.45 — a 55-percent reduction in risk for pregnancy loss. Vitamin B6 and folic acid, included in preconception and pregnancy vitamin formulations, can reduce miscarriage risk.

Folic acid supplements are recommended for women of childbearing age, as their use in the weeks leading up to and following conception reduces the risk for having a child with a neural tube defect.

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