Can you still drink coffee when you are pregnant?
It's a widely held belief that no amount of caffeine is safe during pregnancy. However, the intense fatigue brought on by pregnancy makes a pumpkin-spiced pick-me-up ever more enticing.
"Caffeine is a stimulant and known to affect the sympathetic nervous system, the 'flight and flight' response in humans," Andrew Shennan, Professor of Obstetrics at King's College London, told Newsweek. "It will cause an increase in blood pressure and is known to stimulate and alert by increasing activity in nerves. As nerves affect all blood vessels, there is concern that blood supply may be compromised to a baby in pregnancy."
Previous research has suggested that increased maternal caffeine intake may be associated with problems in the brain development of children. However, these results have been inconclusive.
In a new study, published in the journal Psychological Medicine, a global team of researchers assessed the relationship between parental coffee consumption and traits related to ADHD and autism in their children. These included social communication and behavioral difficulties as well as inattention and hyperactive-impulsive behavior.
Included in the investigation were 58,694 mother-child pairs and 22,576 father-child pairs.
Initially, the team saw a positive association between maternal coffee consumption and autism- and ADHD-like traits in children. However, once they adjusted for other lifestyle factors, such as smoking, alcohol consumption, education level, and income, these associations disappeared.
There was no association between paternal coffee consumption and child autism- or ADHD-like traits.
"Together, our results provide little evidence for a causal effect of maternal coffee consumption on offspring neurodevelopmental disorders," the researchers wrote.
So, what does this mean for expectant mothers?
"This study is good and largely reassuring that caffeine intake is not a major concern," Shennan said. "Although this study does not suggest caffeine is completely safe, it does suggest other things may explain the poor outcomes related to caffeine intake."
However, the authors note that their findings only looked at neurodevelopmental traits in children.
"It is possible that coffee consumption during pregnancy may impact the mother or child in other ways," Shannon D'Urso, the study's corresponding author and a researcher at the Institute of Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland in Australia, told Newsweek. "Our study was [also] only powered to detect large effects, it is possible that smaller effects exist."
Previous research by the National Institutes of Health has suggested that even moderate caffeine consumption may result in slightly smaller birth weights.
"Studies are mixed, but there has been links to smaller babies and some having a still birth or miscarriage," Shennan said. "Caffeine will cross the placenta, and the baby is less able to metabolise (get rid of it)."
As a result, it is recommended that pregnant people limit their caffeine consumption, usually to under 200 mg per day. "This would be equivalent to two small cups of coffee, but these can vary considerably," Shennan said. "For example, many coffee shops sell sizes where many of their products exceed this amount in a single serving."
He continued: "Like most things in pregnancy, moderation is key. Caffeine can easily be avoided and the way to ensure no problems is to limit intake or abstain. The current evidence is uncertain and it would be wise not to risk a possible down side of excessive intake given the findings of many studies."
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References
D'Urso, S., Wootton, R. E., Ask, H., Nunes, C. B., Andreassen, O. A., Hwang, L.-D., Moen, G.-H., Evans, D. M., & Havdahl, A. (2024). Mendelian randomization analysis of maternal coffee consumption during pregnancy on offspring neurodevelopmental difficulties in the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa). Psychological Medicine, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291724002216
Gleason, JL et al. Maternal caffeine consumption and metabolism and neonatal anthropometry in the NICHD Fetal Growth Studies. JAMA Network Open. 2021. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.3238
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