Obese couples may take longer to conceive

COUPLES WHO are obese may take longer to achieve pregnancy than partners who aren’t as overweight, a recent US study suggests.

In the current study, neither male nor female obesity alone was linked to taking a longer time to conceive, but when both partners were obese, the couple took up to 59 per cent longer to conceive than non-obese counterparts. “If our results are confirmed, fertility specialists may want to take couples' weight status into account when counseling them about achieving pregnancy,” said lead study author Rajeshwari Sundaram of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland.

The researchers focused on the relationship between pregnancy and body mass index (BMI), a ratio of weight to height. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered a healthy weight, while 25 to 29.9 is overweight, 30 or above is obese and 40 or higher is termed as morbidly obese.

Researchers categorised individuals into two subgroups: obese class I, with a BMI from 30 to 34.9, and obese class II, with a BMI of 35 or greater.

Then the researchers compared the average time to conceive for couples where neither partner was obese to couples where both fell into the obese class II group.

After accounting for other factors that influence fertility such as age, smoking status, exercise and cholesterol levels, obese class II couples took 59 per cent longer to get pregnant.

About 40 per cent of the men and 47 per cent of the women also had enough excess fat around the midsection to potentially influence fertility. In addition, 60 per cent of the women and 58 per cent of the men said they exercised no more than once a week, the researchers report.

Beyond its small size, another limitation of the study is that it wasn't a controlled experiment designed to determine whether obesity directly causes infertility, the authors note. It also focused on couples in the general population, not people undergoing treatment for infertility, so the results might not reflect what would happen for all couples trying to conceive, the researchers point out. REUTERS