A new Canadian study is warning that women who undergo fertility treatments but don’t get pregnant increase their risk of developing long-term heart disease.
Scientists out of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) say that failed fertility therapies boost women’s risk of heart disease, especially heart failure, by 19 per cent compared to their peers whose treatments result in successful pregnancies.
The study’s lead author, Dr. Jacob Udell, looks after women who have complications during pregnancy. He came across patients who underwent fertility treatments and ended up with complications like high blood pressure, high blood sugar levels and diabetes during pregnancy – it was an anomaly that piqued his interest into studying this link.
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“It made me scratch my head and wonder whether there’s an association between fertility therapy and complications such as that,” Udell told Global News. He’s a cardiologist at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, Toronto General Hospital and Women’s College Hospital.
“We looked at heart attacks, suffering from congestive heart failure, stroke, a blood clot in the veins or in the lungs, as well as dying … about two-thirds of the women did not succeed in achieving a pregnancy and it was those women in particular that were at a higher risk for a cardiac event long-term,” he explained.
There isn’t a lot of research on the long-term health impacts of fertility treatments, especially in women who don’t conceive.
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For Udell’s research, he looked at the health records of more than 28,400 women under age 50 who underwent fertility therapy in Ontario between April 1993 and March 2011. The women were followed until March 31, 2015 – Udell wanted to know how many ended up with babies and how many didn’t conceive, while also looking into the health trajectories of both groups.
Turns out, one-third of the women gave birth within one year of treatment. The remaining two-thirds had a 19 per cent increased risk of heart disease.
But Udell said the findings shouldn’t be alarming – the risk is “modest” overall at about 10 events per 1,000 women whose fertility treatments failed compared to six events per 1,000 women who ended up pregnant post-therapy.
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The average age of the women was about 35. They underwent, on average, three fertility cycles.
Udell’s team initially thought that more fertility cycles would mean a higher risk of heart disease – that wasn’t the case, he said.
There are some overlapping risk factors between women who are having trouble conceiving and women who are at an increased risk of heart disease later in life, though. For starters, weight and smoking are two common factors that affect fertility and heart disease risk. Genetics also plays a key role.
Udell hopes his findings pave the way for women to discuss their health with their family doctors.
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Udell’s study was published early Monday morning in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
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About 2.4 million Canadians aged 20 and older live with heart disease. It’s the second leading cause of death in Canada. The risk factors for the chronic disease include smoking, lack of exercise, an unhealthy diet, being overweight or obese, and stress.
Meanwhile, roughly one in six couples in Canada are grappling with infertility. For women, fertility decreases after about age 35.
carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
Follow @Carmen_Chai
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