Journal of Pregnancy and Child Health
Open Access

Short Communication

The Effect of Caffeine on Pregnancy-Fact or Myth?

Department of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacy, College of Health Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia

Corresponding Author:

Minyahil Alebachew Woldu
Addis Ababa University
College of Health Sciences, School of Pharmacy
Department of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacy
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Tel: 251912648527
E-mail: minwoldu@gmail.com

Received date: May 13, 2017; Accepted date: June 05, 2017; Published date: June 10, 2017

Citation: Woldu MA (2017) The Effect of Caffeine on Pregnancy-Fact or Myth? J Preg Child Health 4:333. doi:10.4172/2376-127X.1000333

Copyright: © 2017 Woldu MA. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Caffeine crosses the placenta and causes a number of complications. This study aims to review the effect of caffeine during pregnancy. Because of ion trapping weak bases that are non-ionized and lipophilic like caffeine diffuse across the placental barrier and become ionized in the more acidic fetal blood. A number of studies have reported the effect of caffeine on pregnancy. Some of the effects are diminishing fetal skeleton growth; risk of low birth weight (LBW); retardation of fetal development and/or intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR); adverse offspring childhood body fat distribution; increased risk of obesity; risk of type two diabetes mellitus; and Increased risk abortion. Even though a number of effects of caffeine are reported to be associated with pregnancy there are only a limited data showing causal association. Hence, avoiding the consumption of coffee, chocolate and tea during pregnancy appears prudent until more reliable evidences are emerging.

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