Preconception Stress Delays Pregnancy and Doubles the Risk of Infertility

Researchers uncovered how stress impacts the ability to get pregnant by claiming that preconception stress not just delays pregnancy but also increases the risk of infertility.

This study by researchers at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, supports their earlier finding that revealed a strong relations between high levels of stress and lower chances of pregnancy. This new finding claims that stress is also linked the increased risk of infertility.

Courtney Denning-Johnson Lynch, director of reproductive epidemiology along with colleagues found that women who had high levels of  a protein enzyme called alpha-amylase, a biological indicator for stress that is measured in saliva, were 29 percent less likely to get pregnant each month and are also two times more vulnerable to suffer from infertility issues. 

The study was done on 501 U.S. women of ages 18-40. These participants were free from fertility problems. These participants were followed for a year until they became pregnant. They were a part of the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment (LIFE) study.

As a part of the study the researchers collected the saliva samples from the participants the morning after the enrollment. The samples of saliva were again collected after the first day of their first observed menstrual cycle.

The researchers identified the specimens in 373 women and they were measured for the presence of two major biomarkers of stress namely cortisol and alpha-amylase.

"This is now the second study in which we have demonstrated that women with high levels of the stress biomarker salivary alpha-amylase have a lower probability of becoming pregnant, compared to women with low levels of this biomarker. For the first time, we've shown that this effect is potentially clinically meaningful, as it's associated with a greater than two-fold increased risk of infertility among these women," Lynch, the principal investigator of the LIFE Study's psychological stress protocol, said in a news release.

The researchers say that women experiencing the same difficulty can manage their stress either through yoga, meditation or mindfulness.

"Eliminating stressors before trying to become pregnant might shorten the time couples need to become pregnant in comparison to ignoring stress. The good news is that women most likely will know which stress reduction strategy works best for them, since a one-size-fits-all solution is not likely," the LIFE Study's principal investigator Germaine Buck Louis said.

The study was produced in the journal Human Reproduction.