Research Alert: Recurrent miscarriage

When you see Professor Siobhan Quenby’s name on miscarriage research, you know it’s going to be good and today’s release is just that! An absolute superstar in this field and even though she’s not the lead author, I was excited all the same.

Today’s paper released in the British Medical Journal and titled “Quantitative assessment of pregnancy outcome following recurrent miscarriage clinic care: a prospective cohort study” has shed some new light on recurrent miscarriage.

The study followed 639 women attending a recurrent pregnancy clinic to try to establish factors that influence their pregnancy outcomes. The data is in a new database called ‘Tommy’s Net‘.

The mean age of the participants was 34 years old for women and 37 years old for partners. Rates of obesity, smoking and alcohol consumption within the group were reasonably high and more than half of the participants were not taking folic acid.

Of the cohort, 83.4 per cent got pregnant, 16.6 per cent did not, at least six months after they joined the research. Of those that conceived, 72.8 per cent had a viable pregnancy, which means (based on my own calculations that 27.2 per cent either terminated or miscarried their pregnancies. Researchers report that ‘maternal smoking and body mass index (BMI) over 30 were significantly higher in those who did not conceive’.

‘The study identified that subfertility [any form of reduced fertility with prolonged time of unwanted non-conception] as well as repeated miscarriage, maternal BMI and smoking status, contributed to failure to achieve live birth,’ reads the paper.

‘Study findings may enable comparison of clinic outcomes and inform the development of a personalised holistic care package.’

I think the most interesting aspect of this is at the end. ‘Personalised holistic care package’. Sounds suspiciously like ‘patient-centred care’… which in my experience (and that of many of the patients I speak to) is somewhat of an ideal that never quite makes into reality. But if anyone can do it, Tommy’s can!

I’m hoping to speak with Professor Siobhan Quenby soon for Hard To Bear and I’ll be asking her how this can be applied in practice in a clinical setting.