In the health and medicine industry, experts often advise obese women to join programs to shed the extra pounds before starting infertility treatments. However, a recent study learned that those who were obese or had unexplained infertility and lost weight before starting infertility treatments did not increase their chances of bearing a healthy baby compared to those who did not lose weight before starting therapy.
The study was led by scholars from the prestigious Penn State College of Medicine.
Infertility and Obesity
According to a report by EurekAlert, 40 percent of the women in the United States who belong in the age group of 20 to 40 are prone to obesity. There are many impacts that the condition could relay to a person, and among those crippling effects is difficulty in conceiving, pregnancy issues, and death of the offspring.
With that said, care specialists are motivated to give health advice to their patients battling obesity. It is a common process that many institutes have been implementing since then, keeping the health of both the mother and their babies safe and secure against the risks of the illness.
Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology expert and chairperson Richard Legro led a team to examine the cause behind the bizarre infertility rates. The research was presented through the support of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Three hundred women struggling with obesity joined the study. Throughout the examination, each of the participants was evaluated regarding their chances of delivering a baby when they are influenced by the effects of weight loss. Each woman had a body mass index (BMI)of at least 30 before the study. All of them have regular ovulation but incur at least one year of unexplained infertility.
The women who had anovulation cases, in which the ovary does not release an egg during menstruation, were not included in the experiments. Along with the anovulation patients, women experiencing polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) were excluded from the study. This separate case is the abnormal menstrual cycle of a person, which often results in ovarian hormone imbalance.
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Pre-Conception Weight Loss Not Recommended Before Fertility Treatment
The participants were divided into two groups. The first group strictly followed weight-loss regimens such as medication, diet modification, and physical exercise. The second group was simply required to conduct physical activities without any guided routines.
The monitoring ran within 16 weeks. After the programs, each group was administered with infertility therapy that included approaches such as intrauterine insemination and ovarian stimulation.
The authors concluded that there were no substantial differences between the pair of groups in the number of pregnancies and the healthy births. The guided group had a seven percent loss in their weight, while the non-guided group did not have any significant weight loss.
Legro explained that the results could be related to the fact that healthy births are rarely reflected in obese individuals who lost weight before being treated for infertility operations compared to those who did not undergo procedures prior to gestation.
Legro added that there is insufficient evidence to recommend preconception weight loss in obese women who have encountered unexplained infertility. The study was published in the journal PLOS Medicine, titled "Effects of preconception lifestyle intervention in infertile women with obesity: The FIT-PLESE randomized controlled trial."
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