Despite the fact that tobacco smoking is a widely recognized health hazard and a major cause of preventable mortality, smoking remains prevalent in our society.
While there has been a decrease in the incidence of smoking in the general population, the percentage of female smokers has increased considerably.
There is a strong association between cigarette smoking and reduced fertility, and earlier mean age of menopause.

Researchers from Hamilton Health Sciences, in Ontario, performed a retrospective analysis of the outcomes of 225 patients ( 97 IVF = in vitro fecondation and 128 ICSI = intracytoplasmic sperm injection ) being treated for infertility between January 2003 and March 2004.

Smoking status and the average number of cigarettes consumed daily was obtained from the patients’preliminary fertility assessment form completed on the first visit to the clinic.

Patients were classified into one of three groups: (1) mainstream smoke ( MS, n = 39: 18 IVF and 21 ICSI ); (2) sidestream smoke ( SS, n = 40: 16 IVF and 24 ICSI ); or (3) nonsmoking ( NS, n = 146: 63 IVF and 83 ICSI ).

Mainstream smoke was defined as the smoke that is inhaled by the smoker; while patients with sidestream smoke exposure were defined as those women self-identifying that they live with a partner that regularly smokes.
Non-smoking patients were defined as someone not exposed in either of the previous two categories.

Fertility treatment outcomes including embryo quality, implantation and pregnancy rate were measured.

No difference in embryo quality between the three groups was observed.
However, there was a significant difference in pregnancy rate per embryo transfer between the MS ( 19.4% ), SS ( 20.0% ) and NS ( 48.3% ) groups.
Implantation rate was also different between the MS ( 12.0% ), SS ( 12.6% ) and NS ( 25.0% ) groups.

Despite similar embryo quality there was a striking difference in implantation and pregnancy rates of mainstream smoke and sidestream smoke when compared with nonsmoking.

These data demonstrated that the effects of sidestream smoke are equally as damaging as mainstream smoke on fertility.

Source: Human Reproduction, 2005


XagenaMedicine2005