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British fertility researchers have developed an accurate way to predict which pregnancies are most likely to miscarry and say it could help doctors target treatment at women who really need it.     

In a study presented at European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Stockholm, researchers found six factors with the greatest impact on miscarriage risk — a history of subfertility, levels of progesterone and of the pregnancy hormone human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), foetus length, the extent of bleeding, and the baby’s gestational age.     

Individually, these factors were unable to predict accurately the risk of miscarriage, but when the researchers combined two of them — bleeding and hCG levels — to create a “Pregnancy Viability Index” (PVI), they found this was a consistently reliable predictor of miscarriage.     

“This research has, for the first time, offered us a robust tool to begin to attempt to rescue pregnancies threatening to miscarry when currently all we can do is fold our hands and hope for the best,” said Kaltum Adam of Britain’s St Mary’s Hospital in Manchester, who led the study.     

Around 20% of all pregnancies threaten to miscarry and about up to 20% of those do.

Until now, doctors had no way to predict which threatened miscarriages would result in the end of the pregnancy and so could not target rescue attempts at the right women or offer them counselling.     

In Britain, around 250,000 miscarriages occur every year, causing significant psychological distress to affected women and their families.     

“This has led to wasteful and potentially harmful interventions, including unnecessary blood tests, ultrasound scans, hospital admissions for bed rest, sexual abstinence, low dose aspirin and progesterone supplementation,” Adam said.     

Between 2009 and 2010, Adam’s team followed 112 women with threatened miscarriages who were between six and 10 weeks pregnant. During the five weeks of the study the women had ultrasound scans, weekly charting of pain and bleeding and weekly tests to check the levels of progesterone and hCG.     

After analysing data on the outcomes of these pregnancies, Adam found there were six most important miscarriage factors, and from there the researchers developed their PVI scale.     

“The PVI was able to accurately predict the pregnancy outcome in 94% of women who had ongoing pregnancies, and also predicted the outcome in 77% of women whose pregnancy ended in miscarriage,” Adam said in a statement.     

She said the PVI could now enable doctors to avoid unnecessary treatment in around 80% of women with threatened miscarriage, who currently often have repeated blood tests and ultrasound scans to monitor the pregnancy.      

“The use of the PVI will negate these in the vast majority of these women, as we will be able to reassure them of a high likelihood of pregnancy continuation and that there is little additional value in doing further testing,” Adam said.     

She said the PVI would also allow doctors to focus on the remaining 20% of risky pregnancies that do go on to miscarry, hopefully giving them a better understanding of what goes wrong and how they might be rescued. - Reuters

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Wed Jun 19 19:52:18 SAST 2013 ::

Jul 5, 2011

Nelson

i dont see anywhere they mentioned 100% but they talk about accurate miscarriage prediction.
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Jul 5, 2011

nalita

i thought only God knows about the secret of pregnacy.
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Jul 5, 2011

KUKU

Nxa!
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Jul 5, 2011

Rakgadi-Tabeya

Long article, mxcm nna ke kgathetse.
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Jul 5, 2011

somaartakeit

why would anyone in their right mind go to an illegal abortion clinic if the government provides resources (alas not perfect) for such procedures to be carried out in a safe and legal environment?
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Jul 5, 2011

ayobaness

i think i have simptoms of miscariage
im passing out a lot of air from my a###ss is normal?
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Jul 6, 2011

adrianmartinadrian

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Jul 6, 2011

Pabi

having miscarriage is traumatising it doesn't matter how old is pregnancy, especially when u are ready to have a child.
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Jul 6, 2011

Mzabalazo

Nalita

After so much achievement of science do you still think that way? SA was the first country to do a heart transplant which then people thought its only God who can make a person's heart work.

Nelson

You start by crawling before you walk, most of diseases that science help people to overcome were never cured over night. ARVs do not cure HIV/AIDS but surely they make a difference to those infected and their affected relatives and friends. At a certain stage no one could see a foetus in the alive in its mother's womb,now we see it on 3D. Give this achievement an applause it is a 100 step forward.
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Jul 6, 2011

Mzabalazo

adrianmartinadrian

Hey you are really marketing your product, jealous down.
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