Research Says IVF Children Have A Better Quality Of Life In Adulthood

It is said that after a new study that children who are born through artificial technology such as IVF, are more successful or get some advantages in terms of quality of life than the children born in a natural process.

“Human Fertility”, the journal published the result of the new study. The lead author, Karin Hammarberg, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia said that their findings indicate that ART-conceived children get more advantages in adulthood apart from other psychological factors. He also added “Together with previous evidence that adults conceived by ART have the similar physical health to those who were naturally conceived, this is reassuring for people who were conceived with ART — and those who need ART to conceive,” he added.

Since 1978 when the in-vitro fertilisation process was discovered and successfully applied, more than 8 million babies have been taken birth. The ART-conceived children and naturally conceived (NC) have been compared in the study on the basis of physical health, development, and psychological health.

World Health Organisation Quality of Life -Brief Assessment, surveyed 193 adults who were convinced through ART and 86 adults who through NC in Victoria, Australia. These participants need to complete an assessment which is a completed questionnaire that is focused on standard quality of life measurements. They have to take brief assessments when they are 18 to 28 (T1) years of age and then again when they are 22 to 35 years of age.

The WHOQoL-BREF assessments of four domains of quality of life are

1. Physical
2. Psychosocial
3. Social relationships
4. Environment

The researchers looked thoroughly at the factors such as mode of conception, when the participant was born, the mothers’ age at the time of born, the financial situation in secondary school, friends’ zone, quality of relationships, number of close friends, sexual orientation, etc and then put scores on the four domains at T2. A statistical adjustment has been made and found that ART-born children are having higher scores than NC-born children. It also found that ART-born children have less psychological stress, a better financial situation, are more closely linked with parents, have better social relationships than NC-born children.

Karin Hammarberg, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia said “Children conceived via ART are nowadays a substantial part of the population — and it’s important to continue to evaluate the long-term effects of ART on their physical health and well-being as they progress through adolescence into adulthood,”. He concluded by saying that “When accounting for other factors present in young adulthood, being ART-conceived appears to confer some advantages in quality of life. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we also found that, independently of how the person was conceived, having a better relationship with parents, less psychological distress, and a better family financial situation in young adulthood contributed to a better adult quality of life,”.

Reference:

IVF Children Have Better Quality Of Life As Adults, Finds Study, The Print India