Research
Hormonal
Obesity disrupts female fertility through multiple mechanisms including HPO axis deregulation, adipokine-mediated inflammation, and oocyte quality reduction, leading to anovulation and reduced IVF success rates.
If you are obese, your fertility is likely compromised even if your periods are regular. This is due to hormonal imbalances and inflammation affecting egg quality and implantation. Weight loss through lifestyle modification is proven to restore menstrual cyclicity and ovulation, improving conception chances.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
In particular, obese women undergo perturbations of the ‘hypothalamic pituitary ovarian axis’, and frequently suffer of menstrual dysfunction leading to anovulation and infertility... Moreover, endometrial implantation and other reproductive functions are affected in obese women with complications including delayed conceptions, increased miscarriage rate, reduced outcomes in assisted conception treatments.
Why this rating
The paper is a review citing multiple large cohort studies and mechanistic in vitro/in vivo data.
Source
Obesity as disruptor of the female fertility
Erica Silvestris et al. · Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology · 2018
DOI 10.1186/s12958-018-0336-z
narrative_reviewCited 652×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Weight loss through lifestyle modification in obese women restores menstrual cyclicity and ovulation, thereby improving the likelihood of conception.Good
- Adipokines (leptin, adiponectin, resistin, etc.) released by adipose tissue in obesity directly interfere with ovarian function, insulin sensitivity, and endometrial receptivity, contributing to infertility.Good
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