According to Canadian study passive smoking is apparently as damaging to a woman’s chances of having successful fertility treatment as being a smoker.
The study suggests that women having IVF treatment and living with a smoker who has ten or more cigarettes a day, reduce their chances of becoming pregnant by half.
Although exposure to smoke has long been suspected to affect a woman’s ability to become pregnant, this latest study now indicates that even sidestream smoke given off by a smouldering cigarette is just as damaging.
A research team, from <<>> and <<>> in Ontario, studied 225 women having fertility treatment, and they compared the quality of embryos and the implantation and pregnancy rates of non-smokers, smokers or women living with a partner who smoked regularly.
The team found that there was no difference in embryo quality between the three groups, but they did find a remarkable difference in implantation and pregnancy rates between non-smokers and the other two groups.
The effects of passive smoking were so clear and so damaging that Michael Neal, a member of the McMaster team, said they were now warning all patients about the potential hazards to fertility.