According researchers in Denmark, women with asthma tend to have delay in getting pregnant. However, it still isn’t clear whether asthma have direct biological link on fertility or it simply causes fewer intercourses among couples. However, studies show that there’s a clear association between infertility and asthma, as it takes longer for women to get pregnant.
At present, their findings simply indicate a trend and it still takes further clinical studies to examine this issue in detail. This report was mentioned in the European Respiratory Journal on November 14. A pulmonary specialist from LenoxHillHospital, NYC, Dr. Lens Horovits, also supported the research saying that the link between delays in pregnancy and asthma is quite clear.
Asthma is one of those inflammatory diseases and its inflammatory characteristics affect bronchial tubes as well as fallopian tubes. Inflammation could take place anywhere in our body and one fact that seems to support this theory is that women who have been treated for asthma, typically have higher pregnancy rate.
However, a British study that involved more than half a million women in 2007 concluded that there’s no significant different in fertility between asthmatic and healthy women. But, we could still say that the Danish study really examines the delays in getting pregnant, not the actual fertility rates. It surely makes sense that, conception would be delayed. Many experts still believe that asthmatic and healthy women have similar fertility level, so they shouldn’t feel anxious. At the moment, there’s still no strong basis to make an assumption that that fertility problems are caused by asthma.
Researchers from Denmark collected relevant data on about 15,200 female twins in Denmark, up to 41 years old. They were asked complete a questionnaire about fertility and asthma. They were not only able perform a comparison on twins, but also came up with a model that represent the general population. Researchers put these women in two large groups, asthmatic and non-asthmatic. Questions include whether these women had tried to get pregnant recently and whether they have been successful
Nearly one thousand women said that they have asthma and they seem to have a more difficult time achieving pregnancy than healthy women, 27 percent compared to 21.6 percent. To further support this finding, women with treated asthma tend to have shorter delay in getting pregnant than those with untreated asthma, 23.8 percent versus 30.5 percent. However, overall both asthmatic and non-asthmatic will eventually have the number of children, on average. This could tell us that asthma may not have a direct impact on fertility, except that it would delay affected women from getting pregnant.