Amongst women who experience recurrent pregnancy loss, around 20% test positive for a specific antibody that targets the mother's own body. A Kobe University-led research team now found a treatment that drastically increases these women's chances of carrying to full-term without complications. Recurrent pregnancy loss is a condition of women who have lost two or more pregnancies for non-obvious reasons.
The Kobe University obstetrician TANIMURA Kenji and his team have previously found that in 20% of these women, they can detect a specific antibody in their blood that targets their own bodies. Tanimura explains: "There is no known treatment for this particular condition, but the antibodies have a similar target to those that play a role in a different condition that has an established treatment." Therefore, he wanted to test whether that treatment also works in the cases with the newly discovered antibody.
Tanimura enlisted the help of obstetricians across five hospitals in Japan and over the course of two years analyzed the blood of consenting women suffering from recurrent pregnancy loss for the antibodies. If any of these women got pregnant during this time frame, their doctors would offer treatment options also containing those drugs that are effective against the chemically similar condition, specifically, low-dose aspirin or a drug called "heparin." The research team then observed how many of the women who included these drugs in their treatment had full-term live births.
