What is it about?
It’s not unusual for pregnant women to wonder whether taking their regular, everyday coffee could have an impact on their fetus. And, what about other forms of caffeine such as tea, cola, chocolate and some over-the-counter medicines? Alongside these uncertainties, it is known that caffeine clears more slowly from the blood during pregnancy, which could lead to even stronger effects. Sharifah Halimah Jaafar, from the KPJ Johor Specialist Hospital in Malaysia, and I did this Cochrane Review to answer these questions, but we’ve found that the evidence is currently too weak to be sure.
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Why is it important?
Before doing the review, we knew that some studies had suggested that caffeine intake is harmful to the fetus, causing growth restriction, reduced birthweight, preterm birth or stillbirth. While other investigators failed to find any association between caffeine intake and these or other poor pregnancy outcomes. We wanted to see what the answer would be when we brought together the most reliable studies of the impact of restricted maternal caffeine consumption during pregnancy on fetal, neonatal and pregnancy outcomes.
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Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Effects of restricted caffeine intake by mother on fetal, neonatal and pregnancy outcomes, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, June 2015, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/14651858.cd006965.pub4.
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