Author: Aimee Cunningham / Source: Science News
Assisted pregnancies give infertile couples the chance at a child. But kids conceived with reproductive technologies, such as in vitro fertilization, or IVF, were more likely to develop high blood pressure as adolescents than their naturally conceived counterparts, a new study finds.
Of 52 teens conceived with technological help, eight had hypertension, defined as blood pressure greater than 130/80 millimeters of mercury. Only one teen of 43 conceived naturally had the same high blood pressure, researchers report online September 3 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. High blood pressure raises the risk of later stroke and heart attack, among other health problems.
The estimated prevalence of hypertension among U.S. adolescents is about 3.5 percent. Among the teens from assisted conceptions in the study, it was 15 percent. “This is a small study, and this is not terrible blood pressure, but it’s blood pressure that should alert somebody that we need to be checking it routinely,” says Larry Weinrauch, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School who wrote an editorial accompanying the article.
As of 2014, more than 8 million babies worldwide had been born as a result of assisted pregnancies, according to preliminary data released in July by the International Committee for Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Palo Alto, Calif.
The new work follows a 2012 study by the researchers, looking at the same kids as preteens. At that time, Urs Scherrer, a specialist in internal medicine at the University…
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