Women sought for pregnancy study

Wayne County - Could an 81 mg. baby aspirin increase a woman’s chances of getting pregnant and maintaining a healthy pregnancy?

To participate in the study, a woman must be between 18 and 40 years-old, have suffered a doctor-documented miscarriage or pregnancy loss in the past (no more than two miscarriages), and want to become pregnant at this time.

To learn more about the study, got to http://www.thecommonwealthmedical.com/ , select research, and clinical trials. For further information, contact Cathie McGeehan at 504-9683.

Read more:

http://www.wayneindependent.com/news/x1092983536/Women-sought-for-pregnancy-study

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Can Aspirin Stop Miscarriage

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It's a distressing thing to happen when you're trying to get pregnant. Doctors estimate about 30 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage.

In our Healthy Living report, could a simple over the counter treatment help?

Researchers right here in Utah are trying to find some answers.

A pregnancy is usually a happy time in a woman's life. But millions of women deal with the trauma of miscarriage.

“Pregnancy loss is one of the most common problems affecting couples trying to have a baby,” said Dr. Bob Silver, University of Utah Hospital.

The University of Utah hospital is one of two research facilities in the U.S. studying a possible solution…baby aspirin.

“It’s thought in part, that a lot of cases are due to decreased blood flow to the baby and when there's less blood flow, there's less food and oxygen and nutrients for the baby,” said Dr. Silver.

It's believed low dose aspirin can improve blood flow, in theory reducing the incidence of miscarriage. There are other potential benefits doctors are studying.

“We're also hopeful aspirin can increase fertility and possibly reduce the risk of trouble getting pregnant,” said Dr. Silver.

It's also thought low dose aspirin could reduce pregnancy related complications such as toxemia and preterm labor. Doctors say while aspirin isn't safe for babies it is safe for babies still in the womb since it's metabolized before it passes through the placenta.

“We feel very confident that it's safe,” said Dr. Silver.

Study participants are compensated for their time and receive a free fertility monitor.

To enroll, you must be trying to conceive.

By the way we should tell you this study is done under a doctor's supervision. Pregnant women should never begin an aspirin regime without a doctor's approval.

For additional information on the EAGeR clinical trial and eligibility, women may visit the study’s Web site http://www.eagertrial.org/ , e-mail eagertrial@som.utah.edu , or call 1-866-912-1967.

Source: http://www.kutv.com/content/lifestyle/healthyliving/story.aspx?content_id=9b63f685-71c6-44bf-9569-bf3075200153

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Study looks for ‘baby’ pill: Tests whether aspirin promotes conception

Buffalo News - Dec 9/07 - Maybe there’s a reason they call it “baby” aspirin.

Researchers at the University at Buffalo have embarked on a study to determine whether low-dose aspirin taken daily can help women get pregnant — and stay pregnant. But they have run into a snag.

They need 535 women to volunteer for the randomized testing. So far, they have only three.

“We have a long way to go,” said a frustrated, but hopeful, Jean Wactawski- Wende, professor and associate chairwoman of UB’s social and preventive medicine department.

“We know there are many women in our community thinking about getting pregnant,” she said. “It’s just a matter of letting them know [about our study].”

Doctors have recently begun looking into the connection between low dose aspirin and maintaining a healthy pregnancy.

The National Institutes of Health has commissioned UB, along with the University of Utah, to conduct a randomized study, dubbed EAGeR — Effects of Aspirin in Gestation & Reproduction — to find out whether it actually works.

“The idea around low-dose aspirin,” Wactawski-Wende said, “is that aspirin has qualities that prevent clots, and it also has a property to reduce inflammation.”

The same qualities have led the American Heart Association to recommend baby aspirin for people at risk of heart disease.

Researchers think that aspirin could help with the implantation of the embryo as well as the formation of the placenta, Wactawski-Wende said. They also are looking into whether it could prevent pre-eclampsia, a potentially dangerous condition that can strike in late pregnancy.

The study concentrates specifically on women who have had one or two miscarriages and want to continue trying to have a baby.

“The reason we are focusing on this group is because there’s very little that can be offered to women at this point,” Wactawski-Wende said, explaining that one in four pregnancies are believed to end in miscarriage. “This is a group that needs to be studied.”

According to early indications, low-dosage aspirin shows promise of helping such women, Wactawski-Wende said, but she strongly cautioned against anyone trying the regimen on her own.

“We don’t know that it’s effective,” she said. “It needs to be done under very rigorous scientific oversight.”

To be eligible to participate, you must be 18 to 40 years old, have had no more than two pregnancy losses and want to become pregnant again.

Participants will be asked to come to the Women’s Health Research Center on UB’s South Campus for an initial screening. They will be asked to fill out a questionnaire, have their body measurements taken and have blood drawn.

Participants will be randomly assigned to take low-dose aspirin or a placebo every day. All also will be given folic acid, which has been proven to reduce the risk of neural tube defects in fetuses.

Aspirin is safe to take for both the mother and the fetus, Wactawski-Wende said. But because some evidence indicates that higher doses of aspirin at the very end of a pregnancy can cause a certain heart condition, all participants will stop taking the pills in their 36th week of pregnancy.

The participants also will receive a fertility monitor to be used every morning. They will be asked to collect and store urine specimens at home for two or three months, keep a daily diary and take pregnancy tests at the end of each menstrual cycle. They will visit the clinic once or twice a month, in addition to going to their regular obstetrician-gynecologist.

Wactawski-Wende pointed out that even the women given placebos will benefit from taking part in the study because they will receive free fertility monitors, which normally cost about $250. The monitors can help pinpoint the best times to try to conceive.

All participants also will receive guidance from clinic workers on conception.

While the women won’t be paid, they will receive a small stipend to cover traveling expenses.

Wactawski-Wende reported that one of their first three participants already is pregnant. She cautioned, however, that the pregnancy still is in its early stages, and whether the test subject is taking aspirin or a placebo remains unknown.

She said she hopes that as women find out about the study, they will sign up.

“When you think about how prevalent pregnancy loss is . . . this is a great opportunity to see if we can help women in our community and eventually all women get pregnant,” Wactawski- Wende said. “This is important. It has big implications.”

Anyone interested in participating in the study should call 829-312.

Source: http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/224882.html?imw=Y

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Some Painkillers Raise Risk of Miscarriage -Study

Pregnant women who take certain types of painkillers, including aspirin, are up to 80 percent more likely to miscarry, scientists said on Friday.

But paracetamol is not a risk, regardless of how often it is used during pregnancy, they added.

Researchers in California interviewed more than 1,000 women shortly after they became pregnant and asked them about their reproductive history and their use of painkillers.

They found that use of aspirin and other non-steroid based anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) increased the risk of miscarriage by 80 percent.

The risk was much higher when NSAIDs were taken close to the time of conception.

Paracetamol, aspirin, and other NSAIDs such as ibuprofen, all suppress fatty acids which are needed for the successful implantation of an embryo in the womb.

But NSAIDs act on the whole body, paracetamol acts only on the central nervous system, which may explain why it has no effect on pregnancy, the researchers said.

"These findings will need confirmation," said the authors of the research, which appears in this week's edition of the British Medical Journal.

"Meanwhile, it may be prudent for physicians and women who are planning to be pregnant to be aware of this potential risk and avoid using NSAIDs around conception."

Other studies have shown that pregnant women who take low-doses of aspirin are less likely to have a still-birth or develop the life-threatening condition of pre-eclampsia.

Source: http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?187026

Randomised controlled trial of aspirin and aspirin plus heparin in pregnant women with recurrent miscarriage associated with phospholipid antibodies (

Objective: To determine whether treatment with low dose aspirin and heparin leads to a higher rate of live births than that achieved with low dose aspirin alone in women with a history of recurrent miscarriage associated with phospholipid antibodies (or antiphospholipid antibodies), lupus anticoagulant, and cardiolipin antibodies (or anticardiolipin antibodies).

Design: Randomised controlled trial.

Setting: Specialist clinic for recurrent miscarriages.

Subjects: 90 women (median age 33 (range 22-43)) with a history of recurrent miscarriage (median number 4 (range 3-15)) and persistently positive results for phospholipid antibodies.

Intervention: Either low dose aspirin (75 mg daily) or low dose aspirin and 5000 U of unfractionated heparin subcutaneously 12 hourly. All women started treatment with low dose aspirin when they had a positive urine pregnancy test. Women were randomly allocated an intervention when fetal heart activity was seen on ultrasonography. Treatment was stopped at the time of miscarriage or at 34 weeks' gestation.

Main outcome measures: Rate of live births with the two treatments.

Results: There was no significant difference in the two groups in age or the number and gestation of previous miscarriages. The rate of live births with low dose aspirin and heparin was 71% (32/45 pregnancies) and 42% (19/45 pregnancies) with low dose aspirin alone (odds ratio 3.37 (95% confidence interval 1.40 to 8.10)).

More than 90% of miscarriages occurred in the first trimester. There was no difference in outcome between the two treatments in pregnancies that advanced beyond 13 weeks' gestation. Twelve of the 51 successful pregnancies (24%) were delivered before 37 weeks' gestation. Women randomly allocated aspirin and heparin had a median decrease in lumbar spine bone density of 5.4% (range -8.6% to 1.7%).

Conclusion: Treatment with aspirin and heparin leads to a significantly higher rate of live births in women with a history of recurrent miscarriage associated with phospholipid antibodies than that achieved with aspirin alone.
Full article: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/314/7076/253

Study hopes to find if asprin can aid pregnancy

When a woman has a miscarriage, she's often told it was "meant to be."

But what if it's not -- and what if taking one children's aspirin a day could help her have a baby?

University of Utah researchers hope to find the answer. As part of a national study, they will be looking at whether low-doses of the widely-available drug can help women who have previously had a miscarriage.

Investigators believe aspirin will help thicken the uterus lining, improving the odds an embryo will be implanted. They also think it will increase blood flow to the placenta, providing oxygen and nutrients to keep the fetus healthy and alive.

Besides trying to help women get and stay pregnant, the years-long study involving 1,600 women from Utah and New York could shed more light on fertility -- a basic human experience that receives relatively little attention by researchers.

"We often just never study pregnant women so we know less about it than we know, say, about heart attacks," said Robert Silver, the university's principal investigator and an ob-gyn who specializes in high-risk pregnancies.

"It's really remarkable how little is known."

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say miscarriage -- defined as losing a pregnancy before the 20th week -- is the most common reproduction problem.

Researchers estimate it happens in 15 percent of known pregnancies, and they suspect it happens much more frequently -- in up to 31 percent of cases -- because it can occur before the woman even knows she is expecting.

After one miscarriage, women have about the same chance of having a successful pregnancy as other women. But after two losses, her risk of another increases by around 25 percent. And after three, the chance jumps approximately 35 percent.

That's why it's important to know the cause, but doctors can't say half the time.

The study, dubbed the Effects of Aspirin in Gestation and Reproduction, or EAGeR, aims to help and is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Participants must be trying to get pregnant and have had one previous miscarriage. The women will be randomly selected to take 81 milligrams of aspirin a day or a placebo. All will take folic acid.

"This is a low-cost, easily available treatment that may be able to help maintain and prevent unnecessary losses," said Enrique Schisterman, the principal investigator at the Maryland-based federal agency.

Silver suspects -- and the study could help confirm -- that most miscarriages that occur before eight weeks are due to genetic errors as the embryo develops. Those problems can't be helped. "It's nature's way of taking care of a pregnancy that couldn't survive," he said.

The pregnancy losses that happen later could more likely be due to blood flow, Silver predicts. Researchers hope to know for sure by examining ultrasounds, blood tests and placenta and fetal tissue from the study participants.

Some doctors already advise women to take low-dose aspirin if they have suffered multiple miscarriages. That's because aspirin has helped women prone to blood clots get pregnant, Silver said. In addition, some data shows that aspirin improves the pregnancy rates by 16 percent among women undergoing in-vitro fertilization, Schisterman said.

The two researchers say aspirin could also reduce the risk of high blood pressure during pregnancy, called preeclampsia, prevent preterm labor and help fetuses fully grow.

"The main outcome of the trial will be miscarriage, but we hope to see effects in later pregnancy as well," Schisterman said.

While other studies have not shown aspirin to help women with previous miscarriages, the drug was used by women after they became pregnant, Schisterman said. This study is different because women will start taking aspirin before they conceive. Studies have shown low doses of aspirin do not harm fetuses, the researchers said.

Participants will be keeping a daily diary, tracking their menstrual cycles, sexual activity, stress levels and diet. They will also provide daily urine samples for a couple of months, frequent blood samples, and have multiple ultrasounds. All that data will give researchers better insights into pregnancy using a larger population than has been studied in the past.

They will learn about the process of embryo implantation, what proportion of women get pregnant when they're trying, and how the mother's immune system works during pregnancy and why it doesn't reject the fetus, which her body considers a foreign object.

"We're going to be able to learn a lot even if the aspirin doesn't work," Silver said.

The urine and blood samples could eventually lead to new tests to predict who will have miscarriages or pregnancy complications, he added.

The results won't be available for three more years.

Source: http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/24351

Some Painkillers Raise Risk of Miscarriage

Pregnant women who take certain types of painkillers, including aspirin, are up to 80 percent more likely to miscarry, scientists said.

But paracetamol is not a risk, regardless of how often it is used during pregnancy, they added. Researchers in California interviewed more than 1,000 women shortly after they became pregnant and asked them about their reproductive history and their use of painkillers.

They found that use of aspirin and other non-steroid based anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) increased the risk of miscarriage by 80 percent.

The risk was much higher when NSAIDs were taken close to the time of conception.

Paracetamol, aspirin, and other NSAIDs such as ibuprofen, all suppress fatty acids which are needed for the successful implantation of an embryo in the womb.

But NSAIDs act on the whole body, paracetamol acts only on the central nervous system, which may explain why it has no effect on pregnancy, the researchers said.

"These findings will need confirmation," said the authors of the research, which appears in this week's edition of the British Medical Journal.

"Meanwhile, it may be prudent for physicians and women who are planning to be pregnant to be aware of this potential risk and avoid using NSAIDs around conception."

Other studies have shown that pregnant women who take low-doses of aspirin are less likely to have a still-birth or develop the life-threatening condition of pre-eclampsia.

Source: http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?163294