Infertility far more common in overweight women

Hong Kong expert Carina Chan of the University of Hong Kong's department of obstetrics and gynaecology says overweight women are 30 percent more likely to be infertile than women of a normal weight.

Chan says women who are so overweight that they are technically obese can have a 170 percent higher chance of infertility than usual. She says increasing numbers of women were being treated for infertility at the Queen Mary Hospital, the University of Hong Kong's teaching hospital, which admits 1300 patients a year with infertility problems compared to 300 a year in 1993.

Chan says obesity is one of the factors and one in four Hong Kong women is now either overweight or obese.

She adds that overweight women are more likely to have miscarriages, having a 15 percent chance compared with an 11 percent chance among women of normal weight.

Experts blame the rising levels of obesity in Hong Kong in the past three decades on the switch to a more Western diet, long office hours and sedentary lifestyles.