Drug Could End Miscarriage Misery

Researchers at the Liverpool University have come up with a novel medical breakthrough, a once a month pill, which can cut the misery of repeated miscarriages experienced by thousands of women worldwide.

A third of the miscarriages are usually caused by an overactive immune systemdefine and this new treatment – a steroid commonly used in treating asthma and allergies - can curb the immune response and protect the developing fetus in the crucial early weeks of pregnancy, thereby cutting the risk of miscarriage.

Professor Siobhan Quenby, lead researcher of the study and a researcher at the School of Reproductive and Developmental Medicine at Liverpool University has already highlighted in her previous study that a third of women experiencing recurrent miscarriages have high levels of immune cells in their uterusdefine called uterine Natural Killer (NK) cells.

Of the 120 pregnant women monitored, all with high risk of repeated miscarriages, nearly half had an abnormally high number of NKs in their uterus.

The higher the number of NKs, higher were the number of blood vessels formed during the early stages of pregnancy. More blood vessels meant an elevated oxygen supply in the womb during the early weeks of pregnancy, a time when low oxygen levels are needed for proper implantation of the embryo against the uterus wall, Quenby explained.

In the preliminary trials of the steroid - Prednisolone, 30 of the 40 women suffering from repeated miscarriages, all with high NK levels, went on to have successful pregnancies.

"I have already treated 40 women who have had recurrent miscarriages due to elevated levels of NK cells and 30 of those have had babies now," Quenby averred. "One had suffered 22 miscarriages."

While the drug - Prednisolone, has its associated side effects, including mood swings and increased appetite, the good thing is that ‘most women would need to take it for just three months’, researchers noted.

The drug will now undergo a larger trial to "make sure the results are not simply down to the placebo effect”, Quenby said. If successful, the drug offers hope to around 9,000 women experiencing unexplained repeated miscarriages each year in Britain.