Association of PCOS with offspring morbidity: a longitudinal cohort study

Do children whose mothers have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have an increased risk of morbidity?

Maternal PCOS is associated with an increased risk of infection, allergy and other childhood morbidity.

PCOS is associated with higher rates of gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia and preterm delivery, but the long-term impact on child health is poorly understood.

We conducted a retrospective longitudinal cohort study of 1 038 375 children in Quebec between 2006 and 2020.

We included 7160 children whose mothers had PCOS and 1 031 215 unexposed children. Outcomes included child hospitalization for infectious, allergic, malignant and other diseases before 13 years of age. We estimated hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% CI for the association of PCOS with childhood morbidity in adjusted Cox proportional hazards regression models.

Children exposed to PCOS were hospitalized at a rate of 68.9 (95% CI 66.2-71.8) per 1000 person-years, whereas unexposed children were hospitalized at a rate of 45.3 (95% CI 45.1-45.5) per 1000 person-years. Compared with no exposure, maternal PCOS was associated with 1.32 times the risk of any childhood hospitalization (95% CI 1.26-1.40), 1.31 times the risk of infectious disease hospitalization (95% CI 1.25-1.38) and 1.47 times the risk of allergy-related hospitalization (95% CI 1.31-1.66). Risk of hospitalization was also elevated for childhood metabolic (HR 1.59, 95% CI 1.16-2.18), gastrointestinal (HR 1.72, 95% CI 1.53-1.92), central nervous system (HR 1.74, 95% CI 1.46-2.07) and otologic disorders (HR 1.34, 95% CI 1.26-1.43). Subgroup analyses suggested that there was little difference in the association of PCOS with hospitalization among boys (HR 1.31, 95% CI 1.24-1.39) and girls (HR 1.34, 95% CI 1.26-1.43).

We analyzed severe childhood morbidity requiring hospitalization, not mild diseases treated in ambulatory clinics. We lacked data on ethnicity, education and physical activity, and cannot rule out residual confounding.

Our findings suggest that maternal PCOS is associated with an increased risk of childhood morbidity.

This study was supported by grant PJT-162300 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. N.A. acknowledges a career award from the Fonds de recherche du Québec-Santé (296785). The authors declare no competing interests.

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