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MELBOURNE, March 7, 2002 (LSN.ca) – Two major studies published in the current edition of the New England Medical Journal warn of increased risk of major birth defects and low birth weight following artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization.

An Australian study found 26 of the 301 infants conceived with intracytoplasmic sperm injection (8.6 percent) and 75 of the 837 infants conceived with in vitro fertilization (9.0 percent) had a major birth defect diagnosed by one year of age, as compared with 168 of the 4000 naturally conceived infants (4.2 percent). The study concluded: “Infants conceived with use of intracytoplasmic sperm injection or in vitro fertilization have twice as high a risk of a major birth defect as naturally conceived infants.”

A study conducted in the United States looked at 42,463 infants who were born in 1996 and 1997 and conceived with assisted reproductive technology and used as a comparison group 3,389,098 infants born in the United States in 1997. Among singleton infants born at 37 weeks of gestation or later, those conceived with assisted reproductive technology had a risk of low birth weight that was 2.6 times that in the general population. The study concluded that “The use of assisted reproductive technology accounts for a disproportionate number of low-birth-weight and very-low-birth-weight infants in the United States, in part because of absolute increases in multiple gestations and in part because of higher rates of low birth weight among singleton infants conceived with this technology.”

The abstracts to both studies from the Journal are available at:  https://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/346/10/725