Debbie A. Lawlor

Menstrual symptoms may negatively impact academic achievement, but rigorous population-based studies are lacking. 2,698 participants from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) self-reported heavy or prolonged bleeding…

Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) may help inform the etiology of infertility. Here, we perform GWAS meta-analyses across seven cohorts in up to 42,629 cases and 740,619 controls and identify 25 genetic risk loci for male and female i…

OBJECTIVE: To study the relationship between conception by assisted reproductive technology (ART) and risk of endometriosis/adenomyosis in female offspring. DESIGN: National registry-based cohort study. SUBJECTS: We studied 449,611 female…

AIMS: To assess the risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in relation to the number of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) cycles. METHODS AND RESULTS: In this registry-based study, we studied women in Norway born betw…

Aim: Hypotheses about what phenotypes to include in causal analyses, that in turn can have clinical and policy implications, can be guided by hypothesis-free approaches leveraging the epigenome, for example.Materials & methods: Minimally ad…

STUDY QUESTION: Are cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors causally associated with higher risk of infertility among women and men? SUMMARY ANSWER: We found evidence to support a causal relationship between smoking initiation and histor…

The timing of parturition is crucial for neonatal survival and infant health. Yet, its genetic basis remains largely unresolved. We present a maternal genome-wide meta-analysis of gestational duration (n = 195,555), identifying 22 associate…

IMPORTANCE: The use of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) is steadily increasing worldwide. The outcomes associated with treatment for an individual's long-term health, including risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), remain largely u…

Problematic menstrual cycle features, including irregular periods, severe pain, heavy bleeding, absence of periods, frequent or infrequent cycles, and premenstrual symptoms, are experienced by high proportions of females and can have substa…

OBJECTIVES: To investigate whether risks of stillbirth and neonatal death differ after fresh embryo transfers (fresh-ETs) and frozen embryo transfers (frozen-ETs) compared with singletons conceived without medical assistance. DESIGN: A pop…

Age at natural menopause (ANM) is associated with a range of health-related traits, including bone health, female reproductive cancers, and cardiometabolic health. Our objective was to conduct a Mendelian randomization phenome-wide associat…

PURPOSE: To generate a large cohort of children born after assisted reproductive technology (ART) in the UK between 1992 and 2009, their naturally conceived siblings (NCS) and matched naturally conceived population (NCP) controls and linkin…

A few studies indicate that women with prolonged time-to-pregnancy (TTP) have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). This has not been studied in men. We evaluated CVD risk by self-reported TTP among parous women (n = 64,064) an…

BACKGROUND: Women with diminished ovarian reserve are known to have increased cardiovascular risk, whether there is a continuous association between the ovarian reserve biomarkers; anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), antral follicle count (AFC) a…

Miscarriage is a common, complex trait affecting ~15% of clinically confirmed pregnancies. Here we present the results of large-scale genetic association analyses with 69,054 cases from five different ancestries for sporadic miscarriage, 75…

BACKGROUND: It is not known whether segmentation of an in vitro fertilisation (IVF) cycle, with freezing of all embryos prior to transfer, increases the chance of a live birth after all embryos are transferred. METHODS: In a prospective st…

The duration of pregnancy is influenced by fetal and maternal genetic and non-genetic factors. Here we report a fetal genome-wide association meta-analysis of gestational duration, and early preterm, preterm, and postterm birth in 84,689 in…

Birth weight (BW) has been shown to be influenced by both fetal and maternal factors and in observational studies is reproducibly associated with future risk of adult metabolic diseases including type 2 diabetes (T2D) and cardiovascular dis…

BACKGROUND: Accurately predicting the probability of a live birth after in vitro fertilisation (IVF) is important for patients, healthcare providers and policy makers. Two prediction models (Templeton and IVFpredict) have been previously de…

ImportanceThe likelihood of achieving a live birth with repeat in vitro fertilization (IVF) is unclear, yet treatment is commonly limited to 3 or 4 embryo transfers.ObjectiveTo determine the live-birth rate per initiated ovarian stimulation…

BackgroundThe extent to which baseline couple characteristics affect the probability of live birth and adverse perinatal outcomes after assisted conception is unknown.Methods and findingsWe utilised the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Au…

OBJECTIVES: To examine the associations between indicators of socioeconomic position (SEP) and hysterectomy in two Australian and two British cohorts. STUDY POPULATION: Women participating in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's He…

OBJECTIVE: To examine the association between indicators of lifetime socio-economic position and rates of hysterectomy in three British cohorts. DESIGN: Cross-cohort comparative study. SETTING: Two cohorts: England, Scotland and Wales. Th…