Reducing caffeine consumption during pregnancy from three cups of coffee a day to one has no effect on the baby’s birth weight, Danish researchers report.
Some studies have suggested that cutting caffeine consumption could raise average birth weight, but this randomized placebo-controlled analysis of more than 1,200 healthy women showed no effect on either birth weight or length of pregnancy. The study was published online in The British Medical Journal on Jan. 26.The researchers recruited 1,207 pregnant women at 20 weeks’ gestation or less who reported drinking at least three cups of caffeinated coffee a day. About half of the women were randomly assigned to drink caffeinated coffee, while the other half were instructed to drink decaf for the duration of their pregnancies, with no other changes in their usual consumption of tea or caffeinated soft drinks.
After adjusting for prepregnancy weight, smoking status and other variables, the average birth weight of babies in the decaf group was a statistically insignificant one-half ounce higher than that of babies in the coffee-drinking group.
“I think it’s O.K. to drink a moderate amount of coffee during pregnancy,” said Bodil Hammer Bech, the lead author and an assistant professor of epidemiology at Arhus University in Denmark. “But our study says nothing about higher consumption. One or two cups a day, I think, is O.K.”
Since the control group also consumed some caffeine (for practical reasons, it was impossible to create a control group that consumed none), the authors acknowledge that their study does not show that caffeine consumption is harmless, but only that reducing consumption has no discernible positive effect.
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