In the current scenario, multiple pregnancies are not advised by experts owing to health and family planning concerns. However, a report by professionals at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, has put forth that women undergoing multiple pregnancies could be at lower risk for multiple sclerosis (MS).
For the study, data regarding 282 men and women aged between 18 and 59 with central nervous demyelination was inspected. The latter refers to the initial symptoms of MS, but which were not clinically diagnosed.
Individuals devoid of MS symptoms served as controls for the trial. In case of women, a minimum of 20-week pregnancy time frame along with incidences of live births were taken into account. For the male counterparts, the number of kids born to them was recorded.
“The rate of MS cases has been increasing in women over the last few decades, and our research suggests that this may be due to mothers having children later in life and having fewer children than they have in past years,†quoted study author Anne-Louise Ponsonby, PhD, of Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.
The team found that women who underwent pregnancy 2 or 3 times carried about a quarter of the MS risk. On the other hand, those who faced 5 or more number of pregnancies seemed to have one-twentieth of the risk for MS. Both these observations were with respect to women who never experienced pregnancy.
The report is published in the journal, Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.