As if experiencing a miscarriage isn’t heartbreaking enough, for some women it keep happening again and again.
Up until now doctors and scientists have had very little explanations as to why this happens, but now a large new study seems to maybe have shed some light on this devastating issue – and issued hope that a treatment might be created in the future.
Professor Jan Brosens and his team of researchers from the University of Warwick recently discovered that a lack of stem cells in the womb lining is likely responsible for miscarriages in “thousands” of women.
“We have discovered that the lining of the womb in the recurrent miscarriage patients we studied is already defective before pregnancy,” Brosens, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, wrote in the study, published in the journal Stem Cells.
For the study, the researchers studied tissue samples from the womb linings donated by 183 women being treated at the Implantation Research Clinic, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust. They found that an “epigenetic signature” common with stem cells was missing from the tissues of women who have suffered more than one miscarriage.
Their findings are notable because although miscarriage is relatively common (between 15 and 25 percent of pregnancies end this way), only one in 100 women trying to conceive suffer three or more consecutive pregnancy losses.
The team also found that a lack of stem cells increases the aging rate of cells in the womb. The uterus relies on stem cells to regenerate after menstruation, pregnancy and miscarriage; the lack of those cells—and the aging process—creates an inflammatory response that affects the ability for a fetus to grow to full term.
“After an embryo has implanted, the lining of the uterus develops into a specialized structure called the decidua, and this process can be replicated when cells from the uterus are cultured in the lab,” Brosens explains. “Cultured cells from women who had had three or more consecutive miscarriages showed that aging cells in the lining of the womb don’t have the ability to prepare adequately for pregnancy.”
Knowing what causes miscarriages will make coming up with a treatment much more realistic, and the team at University of Warwick believes that this discovery will lead to treatments that will help stimulate the function of stem cells in women lacking these.
