Evidence Library · Risks

The very rare imprinting conditions

The relative risks sound large. The absolute numbers are close to negligible.

You may read that IVF causes rare genetic "imprinting" syndromes. Here is the whole picture, relative first and then absolute, because the two tell very different stories.

Pooled across 23 studies, comparing children conceived with assisted reproduction against those who were not:

Condition	Summary odds ratio	95% CI
Silver-Russell syndrome	11.3	4.5 to 28.5
Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome	5.8	3.1 to 11.1
Angelman syndrome	4.7	2.6 to 8.5
Prader-Willi syndrome	2.2	1.6 to 3.0

Now the absolute risk, from a study covering every IVF child born in Denmark from 1994 to 2014 and in Finland from 1990 to 2014, nearly 75,000 children, against the entire background population:

10.7

Cases of Beckwith-Wiedemann per 100,000 IVF newborns

Roughly 1 in 9,350

Of the 388 affected children in the whole study were conceived by IVF

Across two entire national populations

1.35

Odds ratio for all four conditions combined, which was not significant

95% CI 0.80 to 2.29

Beckwith-Wiedemann was raised, at an adjusted odds ratio of 2.84 (95% CI 1.34 to 6.01), on eight affected IVF children. Prader-Willi, Silver-Russell and Angelman were not raised. The authors' own conclusion: the risk is very small and perhaps restricted to Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome.

Why this topic is in the tool at allNot to worry you. To give you the absolute number, because you will meet the relative one. A roughly three-fold increase in something that happens to about one IVF baby in nine thousand is still something that happens to about one IVF baby in nine thousand. And Silver-Russell syndrome, which carried the largest relative increase in the pooled analysis at eleven-fold, turned out not to be raised at all once every IVF child in two countries was counted.

Where this comes from:

66. Henningsen AA, Gissler M, Rasmussen S, Opdahl S, Wennerholm UB, Spangsmose AL, et al. Imprinting disorders in children born after ART: a Nordic study from the CoNARTaS group. Hum Reprod. 2020;35(5):1178-1184.

67. Cortessis VK, Azadian M, Buxbaum J, Sanogo F, Song AY, Sriprasert I, et al. Comprehensive meta-analysis reveals association between multiple imprinting disorders and conception by assisted reproductive technology. J Assist Reprod Genet. 2018;35(6):943-952.

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