Adverse Childhood Experiences and Infertility : ACESI

Adverse childhood experiences can have powerful effects on health and quality of life in adulthood. Thus, having a history of childhood trauma, before the age of 18 (physical aggression, sexual abuse, death of a close person, etc.) significantly increases the risk of having cancer, cardiovascular disease, psychological damage , or earlier mortality. Validated scores allow the evaluation of the importance of adverse childhood experiences, in particular the ACE score (adverse childhood experiences) published by Felitti. Studies on the subject show a dose-response relationship between exposure to adverse childhood experiences and negative outcomes in terms of health and well-being. The physiopathological tracks to explain the occurrence of somatic pathologies in adulthood include the observation of a state of hyper-activation of the HPA axis that persists in adulthood; modulations of immunity, but also epigenetic modifications. Some data are available on the associations between childhood trauma and obstetric risks, with a significant increase in the risk of preterm delivery and fetal death in utero. Primary objective : 1a) To study the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) in women consulting for the first time in an PMA service for the desire to become pregnant, and 1b) To study the association between adverse childhood experiences and infertility in adulthood, by comparing infertile women with nulliparous control women in the general population consulting for their classic gynecological follow-up.