The study,conducted by researchers at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience,used genetic predisposition for coffee consumption and matched it against reported adverse birth effects.
A major genetic analysis has found there was no greater risk of miscarriage,stillbirth or premature birth for women who drank coffee
Research author Dr Gunn-Helen Moen said they found using genetic markers for coffee consumption cross-matched with birth records that no level of caffeine raised the risk of miscarriage,stillbirth or premature birth.
“For the outcomes we looked at we can’t find any effect regardless of the amount[of caffeine],” she said.
“There could be a small negative effect that we couldn’t see but in general we are pretty confident there are no large negative effects from drinking coffee while pregnant.”
Research co-author Dr Daniel Hwang said coffee drinking behaviour is partly due to genetics,with a specific set of genetic variants affecting how much coffee we drink.
The risk of miscarriage,stillbirth or premature birth was not affected by any amount of caffeine,research findings showed.
“We showed that these genetic variants not only affect coffee consumption in the general population but also in pregnant women,” he said.
“When it comes to diet during pregnancy women are often advised to cut things out,but this study shows they can still enjoy coffee without worrying about increasing the risk of these pregnancy outcomes.”
Current Australian guidelines are for no more than 200 milligrams of caffeine a day for pregnant women,the equivalent of a single espresso shot.
Even that is lower than official WHO guidelines,which sets the safe limit at 300 milligrams.
Just how safe caffeine is for pregnant women and their babies has been the subject of much research in recent years.
In 2020,a major study published in the theBritish Medical Journal:Evidence Based Medicine publication found that no amount of caffeine was safe for a developing fetus,recommending pregnant women avoid caffeine entirely.
However,researchers in the field immediately pushed back against the findings,saying they were alarmist and not backed up by the data.
In particular experts were critical that the study did not specifically establish causation between caffeine ingestion and adverse events in newborns,which could have been attributed to cigarette smoking or other adverse behaviours.
However,some did concede that the study provided “compelling evidence to ponder” despite its flaws.
For her research,Moen conceded that there may be other negative effects related to caffeine consumption during pregnancy which they did not include in the study.
However,she said the risk of miscarriage,stillbirth or premature birth was not affected by any amount of caffeine according to the findings in her research.
“We only looked at a limited number of outcomes,so we can’t rule out all other negative effects in pregnancy,” she said.
“So I wouldn’t recommend women to start drinking an excessive amount of coffee during pregnancy,but we couldn’t find any adverse effects on the outcomes we studied.”
The researchers used data from the Coffee and Caffeine Genetics Consortium,the UK BioBank,the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children and 23andMe for the study.
The research used a method called Mendelian Randomisation to use the genetic data to essentially mimic a randomised controlled trial,as it would be unethical to experiment directly on pregnant women.
The research has been published in the.