Effect of increased protein intake on the risk of female infertility.

Abstract

Introduction An unbalanced diet and consumption of nutritionally inadequate food may contribute to disease and health disorders. 1 The lit erature also suggests that the nutritional quality of food, including the amount and type of proteins consumed, may impact female fertility. 2,3 It is possible because the cells present in the ovaries contain insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) receptors. The IGF-1 level is correlated, among others, with the protein intake. 3-5 Based on these premises, we used epidemiological and clinical data to determine the effect of protein intake on the po tential risk of infertility in women. Patients and methods The study was conducted on a group of 100 women aged 20 to 40 years, who were patients at the Gynaecology and Obstetrics Clinical Hospital of the Poznan University of Medical Sciences, Poznan, Poland. We used simple random sampling (dependant) to ensure research integrity. Participants were divided into 2 groups: group A, including women with infertility disorders (diagnosed by a gynecologist), receiving no pharmacological infertility treatment, and wishing to become pregnant; and group B, including women with no infertility disorders, with no natural or induced miscarriages in history, with successful pregnancies in the past, and wishing to become pregnant.