Getting either your tonsils or appendix surgically taken out doesn’t seem like an appealing prospect. But believe it or not, they do have a benefit—especially if you’re a woman who wants to get pregnant.
According to a new study involving women in the United Kingdom, those who have had their appendix or tonsils or both removed are more likely to get pregnant.
Now if you’re thinking of going out of your way to have either a tonsillectomy or appendectomy, hold your horses! The study doesn’t encourage women to do that at all.
A clinical senior lecturer in the School of Medicine at the University of Dundee and the study’s co-author Sami Shimi said “women who have had an appendectomy or tonsillectomy, or even more particularly both, are more likely to become pregnant, and sooner than the rest of the general population.”
The researchers looked into the medical records of 54, 675 women who had undergone appendectomy, 112, 607 women who had undergone tonsillectomy and 10,340 women who had both their appendix and tonsils removed, as per the Parent Herald.
The researchers then compared these pregnancy rates to 355,244 women who did not go through appendectomy or tonsillectomy.
Women whose appendix are still intact had 43.7% of pregnancy rate. Those who have had their appendix removed has a pregnancy rate of 54.4%, while those who have undergone a tonsillectomy had 53.4%.
For women who had both appendix and tonsils taken out had 59.7% pregnancy rate.
In a BBC interview, Prof. Allan Pacey from the University of Sheffield in an interview with BBC said the study was “interesting.”
“There are several explanations which may account for these observations, one of which is that the removal of these tissues makes an alteration to their immune system which has an impact to some aspect of the reproductive process (such as how their embryos implant in the womb).”
Published in the international journal Fertility and Sterility, the study also said that a behavioural cause for higher pregnancy rates for women who have undergone appendectomy and tonsillectomy is more likely than a biological one.