Moms-to-be, please note -- it is time for you to stop drinking coffee, or at least, restrict your craving to only a cup of cappuccino a day. Otherwise, you might end up with a miscarriage.
Researchers in the United States have carried out a study and found that drinking even two cups of coffee everyday during pregnancy could double the risk of losing a baby for expectant mothers.
"Our study strengthens the association between caffeine and miscarriage risk because it removes speculation that the association's due to reduced caffeine intake by healthy pregnant women. The main message for pregnant women is that they should consider stopping caffeine consumption.
"If they have to drink caffeine-containing beverages, they should reduce the amount to one cup a day at the most," according to lead researcher De-Kun Li at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland.
Li and his fellow researchers came to the conclusion after analysing 1,063 women in the San Francisco area early in their pregnancies. They questioned the participants about their beverage consumption and whether they were experiencing morning sickness.
Those women who consumed 200 milligrammes of caffeine or more a day were about twice as likely to miscarry, they found. "That's about the amount of caffeine in two five-ounce cups of coffee, five 12-ounce cans of soda or six five-ounce cups of tea," Li said.
According to Li, the findings are consistent with those of earlier studies which have found an increased risk of miscarriage from daily consumption of about 150 to 300 milligrammes of caffeine.
"The relationship between caffeine intake and miscarriage's controversial. The question has been whether this association is due to caffeine itself or something else.
"We went one step further in determining whether it was the caffeine itself or it's women changing their drinking pattern. My hope is our study will remove that uncertainty. I think this should put the argument to rest," Li was quoted by the Washington Post as saying.
The results of the study have been published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
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