Researchers discover treatment for leading cause of recurrent miscarriages

Among women who experience repeated miscarriages, about 20 percent test positive for a specific antibody that targets the mother’s body. A research team led by Kobe University has now found a treatment that significantly increases the chances of these women carrying their pregnancies to term without complications.

They published their results in the journal Frontiers in immunology.

Recurrent miscarriage is a condition that affects women who have lost two or more pregnancies for reasons that are not obvious. Obstetrician Tanimura Kenji of Kobe University and his team have already discovered that in 20% of these women, they can detect in their blood a specific antibody that targets their own body.

Tanimura explains: “There is no known treatment for this particular disease, but the antibodies have a similar target to those that play a role in another disease for which there is an established treatment.” So he wanted to see if this treatment also works in cases where the newly discovered antibody is used.

Tanimura called on obstetricians from five hospitals in Japan and, for two years, tested the blood of consenting women suffering from repeated miscarriages for antibodies. If any of the women became pregnant during that time, their doctors offered them treatment options that also included drugs that were effective against the chemically similar disease, specifically low-dose aspirin or a drug called heparin.

The research team then looked at how many women who included these drugs in their treatment had full-term live births or pregnancy complications and compared these results to pregnancy outcomes in women who took neither drug.

The Kobe University researchers reported that women who received the treatment were significantly more likely to have live births (87%) than those who did not receive treatment (only 50% of whom had live births). Moreover, among those born alive, the treatment reduced the likelihood of complications from 50% to 6%.

“The sample size was rather small (39 women received the treatment and eight did not), but the results clearly show that treatment with low-dose aspirin or heparin is very effective in preventing miscarriage or complications, also in women who have these newly discovered self-targeting antibodies,” says Tanimura.

Many women who tested positive for the new self-targeted antibodies also tested positive for the already known antibodies. However, the Kobe University-led team found that women who had only the newly discovered antibodies and who received the treatment were even more likely to have a live birth (93%) and, of these, none had pregnancy complications.

“The newly discovered self-targeted antibody has also been shown to be involved in infertility and recurrent implantation failure, as well as a risk factor for arterial thrombosis in women with systemic rheumatic diseases,” Tanimura says. “So I expect that studies of the treatment’s efficacy against a broader range of diseases will produce encouraging results.”