Almost 40 years ago David Barker made his observation that poor in utero growth increased cardiovascular disease risk in the offspring. A few years prior to this, the first baby to be conceived through IVF was born. Since then, an estimated 8 million babies worldwide have been born via one form or another of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). However, data from experimental animal and human clinical studies have highlighted the period around conception as being particularly sensitive to sub-optimal environmental conditions. Furthermore, there is growing concern that aspects of the ART procedures themselves may alter fetal and neonatal growth and increase the incidence of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, cancer, asthma and neurodevelopmental issues in the children. However, a large degree of confounding factors including parental infertility, disparity in ART culture media and methods, and even the design of the follow-up studies, mean that further investigations are required in the definition of causal relationships between ART and child health.

Since the birth of Louise Brown, the first ‘test tube baby’, in 1978, assisted reproductive technology (ART) has become one of the standard treatments for couples with subfertility problems. Today, it is estimated that 8 million children have been born via ART worldwide and up to 6% of newborns in Europe are conceived via this technique (Adamson et al., 2019). Surprisingly, relatively little is known about the short- and especially long-term effects of ART manipulations on the health risks for the children.