Impact of maternal depression and anxiety-related disorders on live birth rate in women with recurrent pregnancy loss

Abstract

It is unknown whether depression and anxiety-related conditions associate with poor perinatal outcomes, especially live birth rates, among women diagnosed with recurrent pregnancy loss. We performed a retrospective cohort study using the Japanese Medical Data Centre Claims Database and identified women diagnosed with recurrent pregnancy loss. Live birth rates were compared as the primary outcome between patients with and without depression and/or anxiety-related disorders. A stabilised inverse probability of treatment weight analysis using propensity scores was also performed to assess the association. Among 5,517 eligible patients, there were 804 (14.6%) women who had depression and/or anxiety-related disorders during treatment for recurrent pregnancy loss during pregnancy. The overall live birth rates differed significantly between the groups according to the Kaplan–Meier method and log-rank test (p = 0.011). However, Cox proportional-hazards regression model and stabilised inverse probability of treatment weight analysis showed no statistically significant association between depressive disorders and live birth rates. The current study showed that approximately 15% of patients diagnosed with recurrent pregnancy loss develop depressive disorders. After accounting for variables, we found no independent association between depressive disorders after recurrent pregnancy losses and low live birth rates.

Keywords:

• Anxiety-related disorder
• depression
• live birth rate
• propensity score
• recurrent pregnancy loss

Acknowledgments

None.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (19AA2007) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (20H03907 and 17H05077).