What to Know About Men, Marijuana, and Miscarriage
A new study links men’s marijuana use to miscarriage. But there’s more to the story.
New research suggests that men who use marijuana more than once a week prior to conception have double the risk of a partner’s pregnancy ending in miscarriage compared to men who use marijuana less than once a week or not at all. So does this mean that men who toke are to blame for miscarriage, or that they should stop smoking altogether if they’re trying to get pregnant? Not necessarily.
The data, presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference last week, comes from the ongoing Pregnancy Study Online (PRESTO) at Boston University. The researchers surveyed men and women who were trying to get pregnant on numerous aspects of health and behavior, and then followed the women during their efforts to conceive and throughout the pregnancy.
“Our main goal is to look at lifestyle and environmental factors that can affect fertility and also miscarriage,” says Elizabeth Hatch, a professor of epidemiology at Boston University and a co-investigator on PRESTO. She says that while they initially focused on female factors related to miscarriage, they’ve started to look at men’s health as more studies have come out suggesting that exposures affecting sperm could…
