Study Reveals How Caffeine Consumption During Pregnancy Impacts Child’s Height

According to a new study, a half cup of coffee consumed during pregnancy is sufficient to cause the child to be shorter in height.

The researchers led by Dr. Katherine Grantz from the  Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Maryland recently published the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association JAMA Network Open.

The research looked at approximately 2,000 boys and girls in the United States (US) and expressed that this data supports the notion that pregnant women should avoid drinking coffee.

Dr. Grantz revealed that while the clinical significance of a 2 cm difference in height is uncertain, the present findings are comparable to those observed in children whose mothers smoked while pregnant.

Though public health recommendations normally indicate that pregnant women should consume no more than 200 mg of caffeine per day, which is around two cups of coffee, Grantz and her colleagues believe that the lowest values should be far lower than this figure.

They expressed that consistently lower heights were observed, which has been related to an elevated risk of several cardiometabolic disorders in both pregnant and nonpregnant adults, with diabetes and obesity being examples of cardiometabolic diseases. Additionally, caffeine consumption has also been linked to lower birth weight.

The researchers concluded that their findings further indicate long-term short stature, as the team tracked the subjects until the elementary school level. No obvious causes or underlying mechanisms were discovered.