Spring flings, teen pregnancy peaks linked

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KINGSTON, Ontario, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- There is a peak of births of school-age teens in Canada nine months after Ontario's weeklong spring break, researchers say.

Study co-author Mary Anne Jamieson, an associate professor in Queen's University's and a practicing obstetrician at Kingston General Hospital, says the relative likelihood of conceiving in the month of March is higher for a school-aged adolescent in Ontario than for an adult.

The researchers examined all 838 adolescent pregnancies that occurred in the Kingston, Ontario, during a five-year period and compared the conception rates per month with a random sample of 838 adult conceptions that occurred during the same time period.

More adults conceive overall during the month of March, but a larger relative percentage of adolescent pregnancies are conceived during this period compared to adult pregnancies, Jamieson says.

"It certainly is an intriguing finding," Jamieson says in a statement. "This adolescent pregnancy peak may be explained by biological reasons such as variations in fertility over the course of a calendar year, but it's also possible that this increased conception rate in March is because of spring break."

The study is scheduled to be published in the Journal of Pediatric & Adolescent Gynecology.