Coffee and saturated fats not good for IVF success, studies say

Drinking
more than five cups of coffee a day or having a diet with too much saturated
fat could adversely affect the chances of success of fertility treatment.

These are
the conclusions of two separate - and as yet unpublished - studies presented at
the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology
in Istanbul, Turkey.

Dr Ulrik Kesmodel, a gynaecologist at the Aarhus University Hospital Fertility
Clinic in Denmark presented a follow-up study on 3,959 women who had IVF or
ICSI. One in 20 patients reported drinking more
than five cups of coffee a day at the start of their treatment.

These
women were half as likely to become pregnant as those who did not drink coffee and
their chance of a live birth was reduced by 40 percent, although this latter
trend was not statistically significant.

No significant
effect was observed for patients drinking less than five cups per day. The study's
authors conclude that if their research is accurate, the effect of consuming
five cups or more of coffee a day would be comparable to the detrimental effect
of smoking on reducing clinical pregnancy.

Dr Kesmodel
said: 'There is limited evidence about coffee in the literature, so we would
not wish to worry IVF patients unnecessarily. But it does seem reasonable,
based on our results and the evidence we have about coffee consumption during
pregnancy, that women should not drink more than five cups of coffee a day when
having IVF'.

The study
specifically investigated the effect of coffee consumption, rather than looking
at all caffeinated beverages. Dr Kesmodel said that, as a result, 'the assumption
is that caffeine is the culprit although we don't really know. There are so
many substances within coffee'.

BBC News reported the response of the British Coffee Association's executive
director, Dr Euan Paul. He said: 'For pregnant women or those trying to
conceive, an upper limit of 200 milligrams of caffeine per day is perfectly safe. This
is the equivalent of 2 to 3 cups of coffee'.

A second
study, presented by Dr Jorge Chavarro, assistant professor of nutrition from
the Harvard School of Public Health in the USA, looked at the relation between dietary
fat intake and treatment outcomes for 147 IVF patients.

The study
found that women who had more saturated fats in their diet, such as those found
in butter and meat, had fewer eggs available for collection during IVF.

Conversely, greater consumption of monounsaturated fats, such as those found in olive oil
and avocados, was associated with an increase in live birth rate. However,
there were too few women in the study for researchers to measure how important
this effect was.

Dr Chavarro
admitted that the findings were tentative: 'This is the first time to our
knowledge that dietary fats have been linked to treatment outcome in IVF. So it
is important that our results are replicated in other studies before making
strong recommendations about fat intake to women having infertility treatment'.