Birth Defects Surveillance After Assisted Reproductive Technology in Beijing: a Whole of Population-based Cohort Study

Objectives: To compare the differences in the prevalence of birth defects among offspring conceived by assisted reproductive technology (ART) and conceived spontaneously (non-ART), and assess the contribution of ART to birth defects.

Design: A population-based retrospective cohort study.

Setting: Beijing.

Participants: Pregnant women whose expected date of childbirth was verified as occurring between October 2014 and September 2015, and were registered on the Beijing Maternal and Child Health Information Network System, were the recorded pregnancy outcomes. 2699 ART offspring and 191 368 non-ART offspring (live births, stillbirths and medical terminations) were included in our study.

Interventions: None.

Outcome Measures: Risk ratios (RR) for birth defects were calculated among ART conceptions and non-ART conceptions with confounding factors by using logistic regression models.

Results: 194 067 offspring were included in the present study, and 2699 (1.4%) were conceived using ART. Among all the births, the prevalence of any birth defect in the ART offspring (5.5%) was significantly higher than in the non-ART offspring (3.8%) (crude RR, 1.49, 95% CI 1.26 to 1.76). After adjusting for confounding factors, ART use was still associated with an increased risk of any birth defect (5.4% vs 3.5% in ART and non-ART group, adjusted RR (aRR), 1.43, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.90), especially for chromosomal abnormalities (0.5% vs 0.2% in ART and non-ART group, aRR, 3.11, 95% CI 1.28 to 7.58), in singleton births to mothers <35 years. Circulatory system malformations and musculoskeletal system malformations were observed to have a non-significant increase in offspring conceived by ART. However, the associations between ART and birth defects were not detected in multiple births or mothers ≥35 years.

Conclusions: This study confirmed a small but significant association between ART and birth defects. However, the risk tends to be non-significant under the conditions of advanced maternal age or multiple pregnancies.