Women who experience higher levels of stress may have delays of pregnancy often twice more as other women.

In a new study, researchers from Ohio State University found that women with higher levels of alpha-amylase — an established biomarker for stress — were 29 percent less likely to get pregnant during any given month, reports Medical Daily.  

As part of a long-term study, the researchers analyzed data from a longitudinal study of 500 American women of childbearing age — ranging from 18 to 40 — who had been experiencing trouble with infertility.  

"This is now the second study in which we have demonstrated that women with high levels of the stress have a lower probability of becoming pregnant, compared to women with low levels of this biomarker,” study leader Courtney Denning-Johnson Lynch, director of reproductive epidemiology at the university’s medical center, said in a statement.