Infertility is a common issue for women in the U.S., with approximately 10 percent of women ages 15-44 having difficulty becoming or staying pregnant, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A new study, co-authored by Anna Pollack, Department of Global and Community Health assistant professor, explores whether there is an association between dietary fat intake and a woman’s reproductive hormone concentration. The study is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
“While there is increasing information available about the relationship among dietary and lifestyle factors and human reproduction, there have only been a few studies that have examined the role of dietary fat intake and a women’s menstrual cycle,” Pollack said. “We sought to explore this association to see if fatty acids played a role in women’s fertility.”
This new study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, analyzed 259 women from the BioCycle Study, a cohort of healthy women, aged 18 to 44, from western New York. Participants’ dietary intake and reproductive hormones were measured four times per menstrual cycle for two cycles.
Based on the results, the authors concluded that although higher polyunsaturated fatty acid intake was associated with greater testosterone concentrations, the increase was small. They also concluded that total fat or specific types of fat were not associated with other reproductive hormones, suggesting further study is needed to determine the implications for women’s fertility.