Lisa Skyggelund Wienecke
University College Copenhagen, Denmark
Title: Ninth-grade school achievement in Danish children conceived following fertility treatment: a population-based cohort study
Biography
Biography: Lisa Skyggelund Wienecke
Abstract
Objective: To assess whether academic achievement among children conceived following fertility treatment is different from that of children born to fertile women while also considering the underlying infertility.
Design: Population-based cohort study.
Patient(s): The study population consisted of all 154,536 firstborns, live-born, singleton children in Denmark between 1995 and 2000 who completed their ninth grade with an examination.
Intervention(s): The Danish Infertility Cohort was used to identify children conceived after fertility treatment (n = 10,099), and information on mean school marks was obtained from Statistics Denmark.
Results: After adjustment for potential confounders, the overall mean marks were statistically significantly lower for children conceived after the various fertility treatment procedures (e.g., any fertility treatment: MD -0.13; 95% CI -0.18, -0.08) compared with children born to fertile women. No difference was observed (aOR 1.15; 95% CI 0.89, 1.49) for not passing the ninth-grade examination. When children born to women requiring fertility assistance but without fertility treatment in the index pregnancy were used as a reference group, no differences in the adjusted overall mean marks and the likelihood of not passing the ninth grade with an examination were observed.
Conclusion: Our findings indicate that fertility treatment per se is not associated with lower school marks and the likelihood of not passing the ninth grade with an examination. Hence, we suggest that factors related to both fertility problems and cognitive development may more likely explain the slightly lower academic performance (i.e., modest lower mean marks) among children conceived after fertility treatment.