Does air pollution reduce the chances of success?

Eight years after the start of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment, 48% of couples have become parents thanks to this technique or another medical treatment, according to the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED). IVF therefore does not always work and several factors come into play to explain this failure, such as smoking, contact with endocrine disruptors or even pollution. On this last factor, a recent study published in the journal Environment International provides new proof.

The impact of air pollution on IVF

According to researchers from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory Universityit is more precisely air pollution which reduces the chances of successful IVF. This would have a negative impact on the development of the embryo.

To achieve this result, scientists studied samples from 500 anonymous egg donors and 915 male recipients who all underwent IVF between 2008 and 2019. At the same time, they calculated daily exposure to pollutants based on different criteria such as residential address.

Thus, they observed that air pollution did have an impact on IVF. More specifically, exposure to organic carbon (which is often linked to fine PM2.5 particles because it comes from various combustion sources such as car exhaust) reduced the chances of oocyte survival, successful fertilization and the quality of the embryo.

“The particularity of [cette étude] is that exposures to sperm and oocytes are not correlated, which allows us to evaluate their impact on fertilization and embryo quality separately, underlines Audrey Gaskins, one of the authors. And we found that maternal and paternal exposures to air pollution during gametogenesis [processus de développement des cellules germinales, c’est-à-dire reproductrices] had independent, largely detrimental effects on early embryological outcomes.” This means that even before IVF, air pollution impacts the quality of reproductive cells in men and women.

Reduce the exposure of couples trying to have a child

“Based on our study and others, air pollution is certainly a source of exposure concern for people seeking [à avoir un enfant]explains Sarah LaPointe, first author of the study, in a communiqué. Focus should be on reducing exposures for these populations, among many other populations”.

According to at UNICEFthe impact of air pollution on human health is increasingly significant. There 5th edition of the State of Global Air report (SoGA) indicates that in 2021, human exposure to it would have been the cause of 8.1 million deaths worldwide.