A new study from a team of researchers in China suggests that coffee or tea consumption during pregnancy does not have a negative impact on the cognitive development of children.
The findings even suggest that women who consistently consumed tea, particularly during the later stages of pregnancy, had children who scored higher on standardized measures of cognition and motor skills by about age three.
By contrast, the study showed that coffee consumption showed no significant effect on children’s cognitive outcomes. This follows other recent good news — or at least not-bad news — regarding coffee consumption and pregnancy, including a major study that found no link to ADHD in children, and no link to miscarriage risk.
Led by a team at Anhui Medical University and conducted as part of the China National Birth Cohort (CNBC), the new research followed more than 1,400 women receiving care at a maternal and child health care center in the Anhui Province.
The team collected data on each mother’s consumption habits of coffee and tea across all three trimesters. The mothers answered questions about whether they drank tea or coffee “never,” “once in a while,” or “at least once a day” in each of three stages of pregnancy. At around 36 months after birth, the cognitive development of their children was assessed using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, a widely used tool that measures cognitive, language and motor skills in infants and toddlers.
According to the results, mothers who continued drinking tea through the second and third trimesters were more likely to have children with slightly higher scores in cognition, fine motor and gross motor domains than those who either never drank tea or drank only in the first trimester.
In statistical terms, these modest gains were consistent, even after adjusting for multiple factors, including maternal age, pre-pregnancy body mass index, education level, income, smoking habits, and mental health measures such as anxiety and depression.
While coffee is typically a greater source of caffeine, the study did not find any link — positive or negative — between maternal coffee intake during pregnancy and children’s cognitive scores. The authors noted that other components in tea — such as polyphenols and catechins — might help to explain the beneficial association, although exact levels of these compounds were not measured. Notably, most participants who reported drinking tea said they consumed green tea more often than black tea.
The researchers noted several limitations of the study, including a lack of data on the exact amounts of coffee or tea that participants consumed, and a lack of evidence as to whether the results would be similar with different demographic populations.
The study was published March 14 in the peer-reviewed mega-journal Scientific Reports, part of the Nature journal portfolio.
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