Having a miscarriage is a heart-wrenching experience—however, the UK’s National Health Services (NHS) has updated its guidelines to help women in certain circumstances access progesterone-based treatment proven to help prevent pregnancy loss.
According to the reworked guidelines released by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), women who experience early pregnancy bleeding and have already had a previous miscarriage will be eligible to take a drug formulated with progesterone,
Baby loss charity Tommy’s carried out the research on which the new guidelines are based, and was overjoyed to hear the news, saying that this move will “help save babies’ lives and spare parents heartache.”
While more research is needed to properly assess the impact of the medication in these very specific instances, Nice’s chief executive Prof. Gillian Leng said: “It is devastating for a woman to experience a miscarriage, so we are pleased to recommend progesterone for those women who experience bleeding in early pregnancy and who have had at least one miscarriage as a new treatment option.”
The treatment also has the advantage of being affordable, and so can be administered through the NHS.
According to Arri Coomarasamy, Professor of Gynecology and Reproductive Medicine at the University of Birmingham and Director of Tommy’s National Center for Miscarriage Research, “progesterone is an effective and safe treatment option, which could prevent 8,450 miscarriages a year in the UK.”
The team hopes that, with more research, women who are deemed ineligible for the progesterone treatment will also be able to benefit from it, and that even more miscarriages will be prevented in the future.
