Black infants born after fertility treatments at significantly higher risk of death than White infants, study suggests

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The researchers were interested in what that disparity in infant mortality would look like “in a group of women that would be relatively affluent,” said Dr. Sarka Lisonkova, an author of the study and associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and the Children’s and Women’s Hospital of British Columbia in Vancouver.
But since fertility treatments can be expensive, Lisonkova assumed there would not be large socioeconomic differences among the women undergoing the treatment and, as a result, no large differences in infant mortality outcomes.
Lisonkova was surprised by the results of the new study: The disparities in infant mortality grew instead of receded when examined only among babies of women undergoing assisted reproductive technology.
“It seems that there are still socioeconomic disparities, even in this particular group of relatively more affluent and educated women who usually tend to go through the fertility treatments,” she said.