Parents who conceive through in vitro fertilization (IVF) can rest easy - their children will be just as moody as other teenagers conceived “the old fashioned way” but no more so or less so. That’s the conclusion of new research from the Netherlands.

“This is a most important study, very well designed, and very reassuring,” Dr. Sergio Oehninger, medical director at the Eastern Virginia Medical School’s Jones Institute of Reproductive Medicine, told Reuters Health. The first U.S. IVF baby was produced at the Norfolk clinic in 1981. Oehninger was not involved in the Dutch study.

In vitro fertilization, the most technologically advanced of assisted reproductive technologies, involves removing an egg cell from a woman’s body, fertilizing it in the lab, and placing it in the woman’s womb. It can cost up to $15,000 per “cycle” of medications and procedures, with successful pregnancies often requiring several cycles.

Even though the majority of babies conceived through assisted reproductive technologies are born healthy, current evidence suggests there is a small elevated risk of birth defects. In addition, women who undergo such procedures are more likely to deliver low-birthweight babies than those who conceive naturally.

The Dutch researchers wanted to look at the mind instead of the bodies of IVF children and to know if the procedure had any effect on emotional health, especially during the tumultuous adolescent years.

Unlike previous studies which have had conflicting findings, Karin Wagenaar and colleagues at VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam went straight to teenagers themselves instead of talking to their parents and teachers.

Teenagers in the study, between the ages of 11 and 18, answered questions about “behavioral, emotional, and social problems” they had faced in the previous six months. The answers of 86 teens conceived through artificial means were compared to those of 97 “control youth.”

Those controls were conceived naturally, but after their parents reported fertility problems, so the researchers could limit the impact of either the genetic or emotional influences of infertility.

“That’s excellent, the most important part of this study,” Oehninger said.

The Dutch researchers found virtually no difference between “problem scores” of the IVF and control kids or in the percentage of kids from either group falling outside the “normal range.”

“Neither IVF conception as such nor growing up as a child of parents who used IVF seems to be an adverse condition for behavior and psychosocial well-being in adolescence,” the authors conclude in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

Earlier this year, Oehninger and colleagues published a survey of 173 young adults conceived in the first wave of IVF treatments at the Eastern Virginia Medical School’s Jones Institute of Reproductive Medicine. (See Reuters Health report, March 6, 2010.) That study in Fertility and Sterility suggested higher rates of depression and binge drinking among the girls and attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADD/ADHD) among the boys than would be expected in the general population.

Despite that, “most people who come to IVF don’t have concerns. The literature has clearly shown very little if any problems,” Oehninger said.

According the Centers for Disease Control, the number of infants conceived through assisted reproductive technologies, including IVF, more than doubled in the U.S. from 20,840 in 1996 to 52,041 in 2005.

SOURCE: Fertility and Sterility, online 13 June 2010.