Hi,
Sorry for the long story, but i was wondering if anyone else had heard anything like this. Or is this just more of the rumours/scaremongering that we have to put up with?

IVF BABIES

A Melbourne study reported that babies conceived through in-vitro fertilisation are more likely to be born pre-term and of lower birthweight.

The study looked at 478 singleton births conceived at Monash IVF over eight years and compared them with a group of 2385 naturally conceived infants. Alison Venn, of the Centre for the Study of Mothers' and Children's Health, Victoria, said that the high incidence of pre-term birth and low birthweight was an important cause of mortality in IVF pregnancies.

The incidence of low birthweight (less than 2500g) in IVF pregnancies was higher 12.1 percent compared with the control group 5.5 percent.

The rate of pre-term births for the IVF group was 15.3 percent compared with only 6.5 percent and babies who were small for gestational age were 14.6 percent (IVF) compared with 10.7 percent.

Ms Venn said singleton IVF births were significantly more likely to be pre-term and of lower birthweight even after adjustments were taken into consideration for maternal age, prior miscarriages, maternal hypertension and pre-eclampsia.

However, another study presented at the conference found that IVF babies did not over-use health-care resources during their first postnatal year. The study by the Northern Clinical School of Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital compared the health of IVF-conceived babies with a group of those conceived naturally by mothers of similar age. The IVF babies were not found to have required more visits to general practitioners or admissions to hospital than the naturally conceived infants. However, the IVF babies were more likely to be fully immunised and have had a far greater number of visits to childhood health care centres.