Professor given national award for pregnancy and obesity research

An MSU professor and a team of researchers from several U.S. institutions received national recognition last month for their research on maternal obesity and its impact on successful pregnancies.

Barbara Luke, an MSU professor of obstetrics, gynecology, reproductive biology and epidemiology, received one of two Scientific Program Prize Paper awards from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, or ASRM, in October.

Luke’s research shows a woman’s chances of becoming pregnant and giving birth to a healthy child become slimmer as her own weight increases. Luke’s research was selected from about 1,200 worldwide submissions.

“One of the underlying reasons for infertility can be obesity,” Luke said. “When women start thinking about starting a family, they should be thinking about their body weight.”

Luke is a consultant for the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, or SART, and analyzes its online database, which includes more than 120,000 cycles of assisted reproductive technology, such as in vitro fertilization treatments.

Of those cycles, Luke said about one-third — or 50,000 — included information for the first time in 2007 on the height and weight of women undergoing treatment.

The added variables gave researchers an opportunity to examine how a higher body mass index affects a woman’s ability to become pregnant using assisted reproductive technology and how obesity affects pregnancy outcomes.

SART is an organization for professionals dedicated to the practice of assisted reproductive technologies, or ART, in the U.S. and includes about 400 ART clinics, which represent more than 80 percent of U.S. ART clinics, according to its Web site, www.sart.org.

“In the literature, this is already known, but this is the first time on the national database we were able to look at the effect of height and weight on the ability to conceive and then have a live birth,” Luke said.

Michael Diamond, who sits on ASRM’s Board of Directors, said Luke’s research is an important step in informing patients of their chances of pregnancy.

Diamond also is the director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the Detroit Medical Center and Wayne State University.

“It’s important to gather collective knowledge from the broad experiences going on across the country in order to get a better idea of how to guide patients’ counseling and appropriately provide reasonable expectations for their ability to conceive,” Diamond said.

Judy Stern, chairwoman of SART’s research committee, said the research will give women the knowledge they need if they want to become pregnant.

“Women need to know going in if there’s an increased risk and what that risk might be when deciding whether or not to proceed,” Stern said.