Moderate amounts of caffeine during pregnancy does not harm baby's IQ, study finds

Pregnant women won’t have to sacrifice a cup of two of their favorite brew in the course of nine months, since researchers say moderate amounts of caffeine won’t harm their child’s intelligence.

A new study at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, among the first to focus on how in utero caffeine exposure affects a child’s future intelligence or IQ and behaviour later in childhood, found caffeine did not lead to a reduced IQ or increased behavioural problems.

“We did not find evidence of an adverse association of maternal pregnancy caffeine consumption with child cognition or behaviour at 4 or 7 years of age,” says Dr Mark Klebanoff, principal investigator in the Center for Perinatal Research at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s and faculty member at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

For the study, the researchers analysed a marker of caffeine in the blood of more than 2,000 expectant mothers who took part in the Collaborative Perinatal Project, conducted at multiple sites in the U.S. in 1959 to 1974. According to the researchers, this was an era when coffee consumption during pregnancy was more prevalent than today, as there was little concern regarding the safety of caffeine. As a result, the study was able to investigate a broader range of caffeine intake than if a similar study was done today.

The team studied the association between a chemical called paraxanthine, caffeine’s primary metabolite, at two points in pregnancy. They compared those levels to the child’s IQ and behaviour at four and seven years of age.

They found that there were no consistent patterns between maternal caffeine ingestion and the development and behaviour of those children at those points in their lives.

This study follows a March 2015 research regarding caffeine consumption during pregnancy conducted at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s. Authors Dr Klebanoff and Sarah Keim, PhD, found that increased ingestion of caffeine during pregnancy did not increase the risk of childhood obesity. Their work involved the same group of women from The Collaborative Perinatal Project.

Of the children in the study, about 11 per cent were considered obese at four years old and about seven percent at seven years old. However, the researchers found no associations between their mother’s caffeine intake and these occurrences of obesity.

“Taken as a whole, we consider our results to be reassuring for pregnant women who consume moderate amounts of caffeine or the equivalent to one or two cups of coffee per day,” said Dr. Keim, who is also a faculty member at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

According to Health Direct, while having large amounts of caffeine does not appear to cause birth defects, drinking high amounts of it may make it more difficult to become pregnant. It may also increase the risk of miscarriage or having a baby with low birth weight.

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