ART - Assisted Conceptions - Pregnancy and childhood outcomes

Summary

The background for this project is that we are observing a growing trend towards delayed childbearing in developed countries which brings an increasing number of older women into fertility services. Thus, children born after ART are contributing to an increasing proportion of births. The first ART-child in Norway was born in 1984, and around 5 million children have been born after assisted conceptions worldwide. ART has been associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes and negative health outcomes in the child. These observations forms the starting point for this study of ART - pregnancy and childhood outcomes. 

In order to disentangle effects of ART and subfertility, it is crucial to have extensive data on parental health, pregnancy planning, use of ART, and family- and sibling data. In this project we combine Norwegian registry data and questionnaire data from the MoBa cohort study to investigate causes and consequences of subfertility and assisted conceptions. The project uses the total Norwegian population as the study population. The project will describe incidence, prevalence and time trends in ART, fetal losses, pregnancy outcomes, socioeconomic factors and ethnicity, and health outcomes.

The project was initiated in 2014 and has been updated with new datasets in 2018. It is funded by the Research Councill of Norway through the Centre of Excellence Scheme.