Fecundity in women with multiple sclerosis: an observational mono-centric study

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disease mostly affecting women of childbearing age. When counseling MS patients, many questions arise on the reciprocal influence of MS and pregnancy. However, little is known on the impact of MS and its treatments on the time to pregnancy. The objective was to evaluate fecundity (pregnancy and time to pregnancy) in a French cohort of MS women. One hundred and fifteen women with MS were included consecutively in this observational retrospective study. Pregnancy and time to pregnancy were collected using self-questionnaires. Among the 115 patients, 216 pregnancies (from 84 women) were reported. Mean time to pregnancy, which was available for 124 of these pregnancies, was 8.57 months when pregnancy occurred before MS onset, and 7.53 months after MS onset. Among the 95 patients who had a parental project, 2.27 spontaneous pregnancies per woman were recorded. The mean number of children per woman with MS was 1.37. Spontaneous pregnancies per woman and time to pregnancy were not different from the general French population. However, despite a normal fecundity, the mean number of children per woman with MS (1.37) was lower than in the general French population (1.99).