Passive Smoking Affects IVF Success
Women undergoing IVF treatment should try to avoid passive smoking to have the best chance of a successful pregnancy. Passive smoking reduced the chances of a transferred embryo growing by more than a half. It has been known for a while that there is a negative link between smoking and fertility but this latest study hints that exposure to others' smoke might be just as bad as being a smoker
Where Does This Research Come From?
The research we conducted by Senior researcher Professor Warren Foster at McMaster University. He said: "Although we do need a prospective confirmation study, the findings from our study already warrant a warning to women to reduce or, if possible, prevent exposure to cigarette smoking, especially if they are trying to conceive."
His team, along with colleagues at Hamilton Health Sciences, Ontario, studied 225 women undergoing IVF or another fertility treatment called ICSI.
They studied the effects of smoking on three groups of women – smokers, non-smokers and "side-stream" smokers, Side stream women were living with a partner who regularly smoked and were therefore exposed to smoke emitted from lit cigarettes. They found no difference in the quality of the embryos from the three groups. But there was a striking difference in implantation and pregnancy rates between the non-smoking group and the smokers and side-stream smokers.
What Do The Results Show?
Lead author Dr Michael Neal said: "There was a significant difference in the pregnancy rates per embryo transfer, with the non-smokers achieving around 48%, the smokers around 19% and the side-stream smokers 20%."
A similar trend was seen with the implantation rates. Implantation was successful 25% of the time among the non-smokers but only 12% of the time among smokers and side-stream smokers.
Simon Clark from the smokers' lobby group FOREST said: "Retrospective studies, such as this, which rely on self-reported smoking habits should be treated with extreme caution. Anyone who concludes from this study that so-called side-stream smoking is as potentially damaging as mainstream smoking would be seriously jumping the gun. The dangers of side-stream smoke would appear to be speculation and until there is clear scientific evidence to support such claims, people should be careful not to draw ill-judged conclusions."
Dr Richard Kennedy, gynaecologist and spokesman for the British Fertility Society, said: "It is a small study so it would be premature to say that side-stream smoking is as damaging as smoking. But it is already established that smoking adversely affects IVF outcome and fertility so I am not surprised by the findings."
A spokeswoman from the British Medical Association said: "There is no safe level of smoke inhalation. Prospective parents should give themselves the best possible chance of conceiving and avoid smoking altogether."
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