A new study has findings of interest for Arizona medical malpractice attorneys, who frequently come across patients who have developed cerebral palsy as a result of birth injuries.  The study rules out infertility as a possible cause of cerebral palsy in children conceived through in vitro fertilization or by intracytoplasmic sperm injection. 

The study was conducted by researchers led by Jin Liang Zhu at the Danish Epidemiology Science Center at the University of Aarhus in Denmark.  The researchers looked at the link between the risk of developing cerebral palsy in children, as well as the infertility period of the couple. 

It has been believed for years now that babies have an elevated risk of developing cerebral palsy when they are conceived by in vitro fertilization or by intracytoplasmic sperm injection.  However, whether this increased risk was due to the fertility treatments themselves, or to the fact that so many of these fertility treatments end with multiple births, was not so clear.  It was also not clear whether the increased risk of cerebral palsy was due to the couple’s infertility that caused them to seek in vitro fertilization or intracytoplasmic sperm injections in the first place.  However, there seems to be no link between the parental infertility and the risk of developing cerebral palsy.

Researchers looked at data from the National Danish Birth Cohort.  They specifically looked at more than 90,000 children who were born between 1997 and 2003.  Parents were asked whether their pregnancies were planned, and how long it had taken them to conceive.  The researchers then studied the children depending on the number of months that the parents had taken to conceive them.  Parents who conceived very quickly were categorized as “highly fertile.”  The categories were further divided based on conception time as between 0 to 2 months, 3 to 5 months, 6 to 12 months and conception period greater than 12 months. 

The researchers found that the parental delay in conceiving did not seem to have any effect on the risk of developing cerebral palsy.