Smoking tobacco harmful - in-vitro fertilization outcomes..

May 27, 2010 - “Nargile (hookah, argileh, nargile, hubble-bubble, water pipe, hooka, shisha, goza, meassel, sheesha) smoke has harmful components similar to those found in cigarette smoke,” explain Antoine Hannoun and colleagues, from the American University of Beirut Medical Center. But while cigarette smoking significantly lowered clinical pregnancy rates compared with not smoking, smoking nargile (a water-pipe) had no deleterious effect on pregnancy rates.

PAPER: Effect of female nargile smoking on in vitro fertilization outcome, Antoine Hannoun, Anwar H. Nassara, Ihab M. Ustaa and Antoine Abu Musaa, European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology 150(2 - June 2010) 171-174, 2010), ABSTRACT..

The team studied overall, clinical, and chemical pregnancy, multiple pregnancy, and miscarriage rates in 204 non-smoking women, 51 nargile smokers, and 42 cigarette smokers undergoing intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Nargile smokers were significantly younger than non-smokers, while cigarette smokers were nonsignificantly older than non-smokers.

Cigarette smokers had significantly lower clinical pregnancy rates than non-smokers, at 23.8 percent versus 43.6 percent, whereas there was no significant difference in clinical pregnancy rates between nargile smokers and non-smokers, at 51.0 percent versus 43.6 percent. Nargile smoking did not affect any of the other study outcomes.

One possible reason for the difference in the effect of cigarette and nargile smoke may have been the significantly younger age of the nargile smokers, suggest the researchers.

The authors conclude that the results need to be confirmed in prospective studies that would include larger number of women with more objective measures of nargile smoke exposure.

Reference: Conflicting evidence for effect of tobacco on IVF outcomes by Sarah Guy, MedWireNews, 5/24/2010.