BMI no higher in test tube babies, unless embryos were frozen

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2023-12-20 06:00

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Babies born via in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and other assisted reproduction techniques (ART) do not go on to have a higher BMI at age five to eight than naturally conceived babies, unless the embryo was frozen, according to an international study of 327,301 Danish kids. Of these, 13,675 were born after ART, 7,728 were born after ovulation induction with or without intrauterine insemination, and 305,898 were born after no fertility treatments. All the kids had similar BMIs, apart from those born after frozen-thawed embryo transfer, who had 1.5 times the risk of being obese as children. But the overall risk of obesity was low in all groups, the researchers say.

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Journal/
conference: PLOS Medicine

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Aarhus University Hospital and Aarhus University, Denmark

Funder: This work was supported by a grant from NIH R01HD088393 received by JH. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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