High Caffeine Consumption By Both Partners May Lead To Miscarriage: Study

While coffee seems to be a new wonder drink, it may also make you or your partner sterile, says new research.

If a woman has consumed two or more caffeinated drinks a day before conception, she is more likely to experience miscarriage, according to the latest study at the National Institutes of Health.

Men too can increase the partner's risk of miscarriage.

"Our findings also indicate that the male partner matters, too," said first author Germaine Buck Louis, director of the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. "Male preconception consumption of caffeinated beverages was just as strongly associated with pregnancy loss as females'."

Consuming caffeine even during pregnancy can enhance the risk of miscarriage. Women who consumed more than two caffeinated beverages in the first seven weeks of pregnancy also tended to suffer miscarriage, according to researchers.

Informatioin gathered from the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment (LIFE) Study, involving 501 couples from 2005 to 2009, indicated lifestyle factors of 344 couples with a singleton pregnancy from before conception to the seventh week of pregnancy. About 98 of the 344 pregnancies tended to end in miscarriage.

More than two cups of coffee a day led to 1.74 hazard ratio for women and 1.73 hazard ratio for men.

"Couples' preconception lifestyle factors were associated with pregnancy loss, although women's multivitamin adherence dramatically reduced risk. The findings support continual refinement and implementation of preconception guidance," researchers concluded.

"Our findings provide useful information for couples who are planning a pregnancy and who would like to minimize their risk for early pregnancy loss," said Buck Louis.

The findings were published in the journal Fertility and Sterility.