FERTILITY

Fertility is an important issue to women who wish to bear children at one point in their lives.  However, fertility can be hindered by cigarette smoking in a few different ways.  To start off, here are a few facts:

      Over 20 published studies in the medical literature have detailed the adverse effects of tobacco smoking on fertility³

      Tobacco smoke contains several hundred substances, many of which are toxic³

      A study done in mice showed that nicotine had disruptive effects on egg maturation, ovulation rates, and fertilization rates. The study also showed more chromosomal abnormalities in the eggs exposed to nicotine³

      Smokers have lower numbers of follicles when stimulated lower numbers of eggs retrieved with, lower rates of fertilization of the eggs, increased rates of miscarriage with in vitro fertilization³

      One study showed that the chance for an IVF pregnancy was 2.7 times higher for women who have never smoked as compared to women that do (or have previously). The same study showed that if the woman smoked for over 5 years, the risk was increased to 4.8³

Obstetrician-gynecologists are frequently consulted by couples who are concerned about their fertility potential. During the initial fertility consultation, questions may arise concerning the potential impact of lifestyle choices on fertility. For the female partner, common exposures associated with a decrease in fertility are cigarette smoking⁹. 

Women who continued to smoke close to the time of conception took significantly longer to become pregnant than women who never smoked or stopped smoking before the year during which they attempted to conceive. A hierarchical regression analysis performed on time-to-conception data in women who continued to smoke in the year before conception provided weak evidence for a dose-response relationship between time to conception and number of cigarettes smoked per day³².  To determine the effects of cigarette smoking on vaginal squamous epithelium in postmenopausal women, we studied the vaginal smear patterns of 199 healthy postmenopausal non-smokers and 41 healthy postmenopausal smokers, with a mean age of 56 years. A statistically significant difference to the hazard of smokers was found in the percentage of smears manifesting absence of maturation of vaginal squamous cells. “A high incidence of atrophic-type vaginal smears in the group of smokers was also found independent of postmenopausal age. In the group of non-smokers, there was a statistically significant difference between the cytologic patterns of smears of women who were in the early postmenopausal age (<10 years) and those many years after (> or =10 years)”. Finally our data suggest that smokers had an earlier menopause, on average 2.4 years sooner than non-smokers. Cigarette smoking has an effect on vaginal squamous epithelium, but pathophysiology still remains unclear²¹.  The conclusion is that cigarette smoking can inhibit fertility, slow the time of conception, and cause an earlier menopause which means that the total amount of fertile years is decreased.