Context: Increasing evidence suggests that adverse conditions during early prenatal life are associated with cardiometabolic dysfunction in postnatal life. IVF conception may be an early prenatal life event with long-term health consequences.

Objective: To investigate several cardiometabolic measures in 8–18-year-old IVF singletons and spontaneously conceived controls born from subfertile parents.

Design and setting: Follow-up study at the VU University medical center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Participants: Blood pressure was examined in 225 IVF-conceived children and 225 age- and gender-matched spontaneously conceived control children. Several indicators of insulin resistance were studied in a pubertal subpopulation (131 IVF children and 131 controls).

Main outcome measures: Blood pressure, fasting glucose, fasting insulin.

Results: Systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels were higher in IVF children than in controls (109±11 mm Hg vs 105±10, P<0.001; 61±7 mm Hg vs 59±7, P<0.001, respectively). Children born after IVF were also more likely to be in the highest systolic and diastolic blood pressure quartiles (OR= 2.1, 95% CI: 1.4,3.3; OR= 1.9, 95% CI: 1.2,3.0, respectively). Furthermore, higher fasting glucose levels were observed in pubertal IVF children (5.0±0.4 mmol/l vs 4.8±0.4 in controls, P=0.005). Blood pressure and fasting glucose differences could neither be explained by current body size, birth weight and other early life factors nor by parental characteristics including subfertility cause.

Conclusions: These findings highlight the importance of continued cardiometabolic monitoring of IVF-conceived children born and might contribute to current knowledge about periconceptional influences and their consequences in later life.