Having a number of difficulties in getting a woman pregnant can be an incredibly stressful experience for a couple. Now, a team of researchers from the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center (USA) has suggested that this stress also has a fairly important influence on infertility.
The study, which has been published in the journal Human Reproduction , demonstrates and confirms previous studies that associated high levels of stress with a reduction in the probability of pregnancy. To do this, they analyzed 501 women between the ages of 18 and 40 with no known fertility problems and who had just started trying to get pregnant. They tested her saliva at enrollment and in her first menstrual cycle to test for both cortisol and alpha-amylase, two biomarkers of stress. The follow-up of their cases occurred for a year or until they managed to become pregnant.
Examining the results found that women with high levels of alpha-amylase were 29% less likely to become pregnant each month and twice as likely to be infertile than women who had low levels of this stress biomarker.
"These results should encourage women to consider managing their stress through yoga or meditation," says Courtney Denning-Johnson Lynch, director of reproductive epidemiology at Ohio State University.
