Page 50 - Fertility in Women with Rheumatoid Arthritis Vruchtbaarheid van vrouwen met reumatoïde artritis

Chapter 3
Fertility assessments
Eighty-two women (46%, 95%CI 39–53%)) were considered subfertile because they met at least one of the following criteria: a TTP exceeding 12 months during at least one attempt to establish a pregnancy (n=66), the use of fertility treatments to get pregnant (n=41), or never having achieved a pregnancy (n=6). Sixty-six women (37%) had a primary subfertility, and 16 women (9%) suffered from secondary subfertility. The mean age during the rst subfertile episode was 29.4 ± 3.9 years.
Subfertile women established signi cantly less pregnancies (2 (IQR 1-2, mean 2.1 ± 1.1) vs 2 (IQR 1-3, mean 2.5 ± 1.0), p=0.004) and had less children (2 (IQR 1-2, mean 1.6 ± 0.9) vs 2 (IQR 1-2, mean 2.1 ± 0.6), p<0.001) than fertile women with RA. The number of miscarriages per woman in both groups was not signi cantly different (p=0.33). The total number of pregnancies in the subfertile women was 168, resulting in 132 life born children. Of these pregnancies, 52 (31%) were conceived spontaneously within 12 months, 48 spontaneously conceived pregnancies (29%) had a TTP >12 months, and 68 pregnancies (40% i.e. 17% of all pregnancies) were conceived with the help of fertility treatments ( gure 2).
Figure 2 - Overview of study participants, pregnancies and subfertility. TTP = time to pregnancy; FT = fertility treatment
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