Hormone supplement ‘could cut risk of miscarriage’

MORE than 8,000 miscarriages could be prevented each year by giving women a simple £200 hormone supplement, a trial has shown.

Researchers found women at high risk of miscarriage had a better chance of a successful pregnancy if they took progesterone twice a day.

The hormone is naturally secreted by the ovaries and placenta in the early stages of gestation and is considered vital to achieving a healthy birth.

Supplementing women’s levels as a means of protecting against miscarriage has been debated by doctors for decades. Now, a team at the University of Birmingham has completed two large-scale trials which appear to justify the approach. Women who had suffered three or more miscarriages who took progesterone had a 15 per cent better chance of a successful pregnancy compared with similar women given a placebo.

The results have prompted calls for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to make it mandatory for all doctors to offer the treatment to eligible women.

The first of the new studies, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, examines the findings of two major clinical trials – Promise and Prism.

Promise studied 836 women with unexplained recurrent miscarriages and found a 3 per cent higher live birth rate with progesterone, but with substantial statistical uncertainty.

Prism studied 4,153 women with early pregnancy and found a 5 per cent increase in the number of babies born to those who were given progesterone, who had previously had one or more miscarriages, compared with those given a placebo.