Drinking coffee during pregnancy is most likely safe

How many cups of coffee you drink while you’re pregnant doesn’t seem to have a negative impact on your baby’s weight, whether it’s being born prematurely, or the risk of miscarriage or stillbirth.

The researchers behind the study found no direct relationship between the number of cups of coffee pregnant women drink in a day, and their risk of low birth weight, premature birth, miscarriage and stillbirth. Illustration: Colorbox.com

Pregnant women receive many dietary recommendations during pregnancy. Reducing coffee consumption is common advice.

Researcher Gunn-Helen Moen. Image: Translation Research Institute

In a new study, Gunn-Helen Moen and colleagues investigated whether the amount of coffee consumed during pregnancy affected a child’s weight or whether the child was born prematurely. They also looked at whether the amount of coffee increased the risk of miscarriage or stillbirth.

– We found no association between the number of cups of coffee a pregnant woman drank during the day, and the risk of the baby in the womb on this measure, said Moen.

He is a researcher at the Institute of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oslo.

“On the other hand, we can’t rule out that coffee can affect the fetus in other ways that we didn’t see in this study,” he explained.

Previous studies came to the opposite conclusion

However, previous studies have concluded that caffeine can be harmful to the unborn baby. Even so, these studies are called observational studies which have a research design that makes it difficult to establish causality.

– Therefore, this study cannot prove that caffeine is harmful, says Moen.

– The relationship that researchers found in previous studies may be due to other confounding factors. For example, it may be due to smoking or alcohol consumption during pregnancy, he explained.

Nevertheless, the findings from this study led to widespread recommendations to drink little or no coffee during pregnancy.

Pregnant women should receive appropriate recommendations

Researcher Gunn-Helen Moen wanted to contribute to better documentation of risk factors during pregnancy. She believes that the recommendations pregnant women receive should be based on well-documented knowledge.

– If our research has shown that there is indeed a relationship between how much coffee pregnant women drink and their baby’s birth weight, whether the child is born prematurely, or the risk of miscarriage and stillbirth, then these findings will be important for expectant mothers. who want to reduce risk. They could then choose to drink less coffee, he said.

However, that didn’t happen.

– It is important to use new methods in the study of risk factors during pregnancy. We must ensure that the recommendations we give to pregnant women are solid. “The important thing is that we don’t make recommendations that have no effect or purpose,” Moen explained.

Researcher Gunn-Helen Moen believes that the recommendations pregnant women receive should be based on well-documented knowledge. Illustration: Colorbox.com

Ethics make it difficult to study risk factors during pregnancy

Medical researchers generally want to study causal relationships through so-called randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

Study participants were randomly assigned to two or more groups, as evenly as possible except for the intervention being studied. To determine whether coffee consumption is harmful during pregnancy, one group of pregnant women will then be asked to consume a lot of coffee while the other group will be asked to consume little or nothing.

The researchers will then investigate how many cases, for example, of low birth weight were in the two groups.

– However, it is difficult to conduct such research during pregnancy. It’s not ethically justified to ask pregnant women to do something that might be harmful to themselves or the fetus, Moen said.

Studying gene variants associated with coffee consumption

Therefore, Moen and his colleagues have developed a new method that can provide clearer answers, and which is not potentially harmful.

This method involves examining potential risk factors in pregnancy by looking at genes. There are gene variants that are linked to, for example, how much coffee a person consumes.

– We found that some genetic variants were strongly related to how much coffee women consumed during pregnancy, said Moen. He continued:

– We then used genetic variants to investigate whether coffee drinking affected a child’s weight or whether he was born prematurely, the risk of miscarriage and stillbirth.

For this, Moen and colleagues analyzed data from a UK UK biobank study consisting of about 250,000 women and the ALSPAC cohort. ALSPAC consists of approximately 6,800 pregnant women and their children.

Want to learn the effects of more nutrition recommendations

Researcher Gunn-Helen Moen will continue his research on the effects of coffee consumption during pregnancy. He wanted to investigate whether coffee consumption could affect other actions than those examined in this study.

She will also apply the same methodology to contribute to more documentation of other dietary recommendations that pregnant women are encouraged to follow.

– Within our research group, several investigators were interested in the relationship between nutritional recommendations during pregnancy and child health. “We are planning a number of studies in which we will take a closer look at the various factors that may be important,” Moen said.

/ University of Oslo Public Release. Material from this original organization/author may be timely, edited for clarity, style and length. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author. See more here.

#Drinking #coffee #pregnancy #safe