Association between gestational exposure to solar activity and pregnancy loss using live births from a Massachusetts-based medical center

Abstract

BackgroundSolar activity has been linked to biological mechanisms important to pregnancy, including folate and melatonin levels and inflammatory markers. Thus, we aimed to investigate the association between gestational solar activity and pregnancy loss. MethodsOur study included 71,963 singleton births conceived in 2002–2016 and delivered at an academic medical center in Eastern Massachusetts. We studied several solar activity metrics, including sunspot number, Kp index, and ultraviolet radiation, with data from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. We used a novel time series analytic approach to investigate associations between each metric from conception through 24 weeks of gestation and the number of live birth-identified conceptions (LBICs) —the total number of conceptions in each week that result in a live birth. This approach fits distributed lag models to data on LBICs, adjusted for time trends, and allows us to infer associations between pregnancy exposure and pregnancy loss. ResultsOverall, the association between solar activity during pregnancy and pregnancy loss varied by exposure metric. For sunspot number, we found that an interquartile range increase in sunspot number (78·7 sunspots) in all of the first 24 weeks of pregnancy was associated with 14·0 (95% CI: 6·5, 21·3) more pregnancy losses out of the average 92 LBICs in a week, and exposure in weeks ten through thirteen was identified as a critical window. Although not statistically significant, higher exposure to Kp index and to UV radiation across all 24 weeks of pregnancy was associated with more and less pregnancy losses, respectively. ConclusionWhile exposure to certain metrics of solar activity (i.e., sunspot number) throughout the first 24 weeks of pregnancy may be associated with pregnancy losses, exposure to other metrics were not. Solar activity is a complex phenomenon, and more studies are needed to clarify underlying pathways.