Lactose metabolism and time to pregnancy

Objective To investigate whether, in the absence of galactosemia, relatively high intestinal lactase activity or low activity of an enzyme involved in galactose catabolism reduces fertility, as it does in the presence of galactosemia. Design Retrospective cohort study. Setting Healthy women selected from the community. Patients Fifty-three married women. Intervention Urinary galactose after an oral lactose challenge (a measure of intestinal lactase activity), erythrocyte galactose-1-phosphate uridyltransferase (transferase) activity, and transferase polymorphisms by isoelectric focusing. Main Outcome Measure Pregnancy rate (number of pregnancies divided by number of months at risk) in the 12months after stopping use of birth control to become pregnant. Results Relatively high urinary galactose was not related to a decreased rate of pregnancy during the first 12months (≥24.6 compared with ≤14.3mg: relative risk [RR] = 1.9; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.86 to 4.0). Relatively high transferase activity was not related to an increased rate of pregnancy (≥19.5 compared with ≤17.2 μ mol/h per g hemoglobin: RR=1.1; 95% CI=0.56 to 2.4). Low-activity transferase polymorphisms were not related to a decreased rate (RR = 1.2; 95% CI=0.58 to 2.5). Conclusion Our study does not support the hypothesis that the biologic variation in galactose metabolism that exists in the general population influences infertility.