This site is intended for healthcare professionals

Go to /sign-in page

You can view 5 more pages before signing in

Infertility and alcohol consumption in females

Last reviewed dd mmm yyyy. Last edited dd mmm yyyy

Authoring team

There is evidence to suggest that women should avoid alcohol if they are trying to become pregnant.

A follow-up study of 430 Danish couples trying to conceive for the first time found that that 64% of women who drank five or fewer alcoholic drinks per week conceived. This compared with 55% of women with an alcohol intake of six or more alcoholic drinks per week.

Conclusions:

  • fecundity (the ability to conceive in any one menstrual cycle) is lower in couples were the woman drinks alcohol.
  • the alcohol intake of males showed no statistical link to the couples fecundity.
  • there is a dose dependent reduction in fecundity associated with alcohol drinking.

Women who are trying to become pregnant should be informed that drinking no more than 1 or 2 units of alcohol once or twice per week and avoiding episodes of intoxication reduces the risk of harming a developing fetus (2)

Reference:


Related pages

Create an account to add page annotations

Annotations allow you to add information to this page that would be handy to have on hand during a consultation. E.g. a website or number. This information will always show when you visit this page.