Various forms of pregnancy losses and risks of depression and anxiety in later life

The long-term associations between various forms of pregnancy losses (spontaneous miscarriage, stillbirth, and induced abortion) and risks of depression and anxiety in later life remains unclear.

We prospectively investigated the long-term associations of spontaneous miscarriage, stillbirth, and induced abortion with the risks of depression and anxiety.

A total of 175,614 participants with pregnancy history and free of depression or anxiety at baseline from the UK Biobank were included. Cox proportional hazard models were used to evaluate the associations between various forms of pregnancy losses and risks of depression and anxiety.

During a median follow-up of 12.3 years, 4806 depression incidents and 5601 anxiety incidents were documented. After adjustment for reproductive factors, lifestyle factors, social support factors, and other covariates, various forms of pregnancy losses had differential associations with the risks of depression and anxiety. Induced abortion showed the strongest association with depression and anxiety risk; followed by spontaneous miscarriage. For example, each additional induced abortion was significantly associated with a 12 % higher risk of anxiety (HRs, 95 % CI, 1.12, 1.06-1.18), whereas each additional spontaneous abortion was associated with only a 4 % higher risk of anxiety (HRs, 95 % CI, 1.04, 1.00-1.07).Stillbirth was not associated with a higher risk of depression or anxiety. Moreover, we found that the association between induced abortion and risk of depression was more pronounced in parous women than nulliparous women (P-interaction = 0.013).

Spontaneous miscarriage, stillbirth, and induced abortion are differently associated with risks of depression and anxiety.