Male and female caffeine consumption ups miscarriage risk—study

WASHINGTON—Women have an increased risk of miscarriage if they or their partner consume more than two caffeinated drinks a day in the weeks leading up to conception, a new US study found.

Women who drink more than two caffeinated beverages per day during the first seven weeks of pregnancy were also more likely to have a miscarriage, according to the study published online late Thursday in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

But rates of miscarriage are reduced for women who take a daily multivitamin before and after conception.

The study, carried out by researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Ohio State University, was based on data from the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment (LIFE) Study.

That study followed 501 couples in Michigan and Texas from 2005 to 2009, examining the relationship between fertility, lifestyle and exposure to chemicals in the environment.

The current study compared cigarette use, caffeinated beverage consumption and multivitamin use among 344 couples when the woman was carrying a single offspring. Of these pregnancies, 98 — or 28 percent — ended in miscarriage.

The researchers’ conclusions were based on a statistical concept called hazard ratio, which estimates the chances of a particular outcome occurring during the study period.

A ratio greater than one indicates increased risk for miscarriage each day following conception, while a ratio less than one indicates reduced daily risk.

The risk of miscarriage was 1.74 when the woman consumed more than two caffeinated drinks a day, the study showed.

However, the risk was almost as high — 1.73 — if the male partner drank that much caffeine or more.

“Our findings also indicate that the male partner matters, too,” said lead author Germaine Buck Louis, director of the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at the NIH. “Male preconception consumption of caffeinated beverages was just as strongly associated with pregnancy loss as females’.”

The study also found that taking a daily multivitamin significantly reduced chances of miscarriage.

Taking a vitamin in the weeks leading up to conception had a hazard ratio of 0.45, a 55 percent reduction in risk for pregnancy loss.

Women who continued to take multivitamins through the early stages of pregnancy had a hazard ratio of 0.21, a risk reduction of 79 percent.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Carbs more harmful than saturated fats – study

WASHINGTON - Long-derided saturated fats—associated with an array of health problems such as heart disease—caught a break Friday when research revealed their intake could be doubled or even nearly tripled without driving up their level in a person's blood.

Carbohydrates, meanwhile, are associated with heightened levels of a fatty acid linked to increased risk for diabetes and heart disease, the same study showed.

"The point is you don't necessarily save the saturated fat that you eat, and the primary regulator of what you save in terms of fat is the carbohydrate in your diet," senior author Jeff Volek of Ohio State University, said in the report.

To conduct the study, which appeared in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists put 16 participants on a strict dietary regime that lasted four and a half months.


Every three weeks their diets were changed to adjust carbohydrate and total fat and saturated fat levels.

The scientists found that when carbs were reduced and saturated fat was increased, total saturated fat in the blood did not increase, and even went down in most people.

The fatty acid called palmitoleic acid, which is associated with "unhealthy metabolism of carbohydrates that can promote disease," went down with low-carb diets and gradually increased as carbs were re-introduced, the study said.

An increase in this fatty acid indicates that a growing proportion of carbohydrates is being converted into fat instead of being burned by the body, the researchers said.

"When you consume a very low-carb diet your body preferentially burns saturated fat," Volek said.

"We had people eat two times more saturated fat than they had been eating before entering the study, yet when we measured saturated fat in their blood, it went down in the majority of people," he said.

The finding "challenges the conventional wisdom that has demonized saturated fat and extends our knowledge of why dietary saturated fat doesn't correlate with disease," Volek added.

By the end of the trial, participants saw "significant improvements" in blood glucose, insulin and blood pressure and lost an average of 22 pounds (10 kilograms).

"There is widespread misunderstanding about saturated fat. In population studies, there's clearly no association of dietary saturated fat and heart disease, yet dietary guidelines continue to advocate restriction of saturated fat. That's not scientific and not smart," Volek said. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com