A Kobe University-led research team has achieved a major discovery in the treatment of women who experience recurrent pregnancy loss, discovering a procedure that dramatically increases their odds of carrying pregnancies to full term without difficulties. The study, published in Frontiers in Immunology, demonstrates the efficacy of known medications, such as low-dose aspirin and heparin, in treating a newly discovered antibody that affects 20% of women who experience multiple pregnancy losses.

Recurrent pregnancy loss, defined as two or more unexplained pregnancy losses, has long remained a medical mystery. Dr. Tanimura Kenji, the study's principal obstetrician, had previously found a unique self-targeting antibody in the blood of approximately 20% of women with this illness. "There is no known treatment for this particular condition," according to Tanimura, "but the antibodies have a similar target to those that play a role in a different condition that has an established treatment."

Over the course of two years, Tanimura and his team worked with obstetricians from five Japanese hospitals to analyse blood samples from women who had recurrent pregnancy loss. Those who became pregnant during the research were given low-dose aspirin or heparin, which are both effective in treating a chemically identical disease.

The findings were startling: 87% of the women who received the medication had full-term live babies, compared to only 50% in the untreated group. Furthermore, the rate of pregnancy problems among treated women decreased from 50% to 6%. Tanimura says, "The sample size was rather small, but the results clearly show that a treatment with low-dose aspirin or heparin is very effective in preventing pregnancy loss or complications in women with these newly discovered self-targeting antibodies."

One particularly notable finding was that women who exclusively had newly found antibodies, rather than previously known ones, had an even greater success rate, with 93% delivering healthy babies and no reported problems.

Looking ahead, Tanimura emphasises the broader implications of these findings: "The newly discovered self-targeting antibody has been demonstrated to be involved in infertility and recurrent implantation failure, as well as a risk factor for arterial thrombosis in women with systemic rheumatic diseases. I anticipate that research on the treatment's efficacy against a larger spectrum of illnesses will yield good results."