Solving the puzzle
Miscarriage -- the spontaneous loss of a baby before the 20th week of pregnancy -- occurs in approximately 15 to 20 percent of confirmed pregnancies. While there's still much that isn't known about the causes and treatment of miscarriage, there have been some significant breakthroughs on the research front in recent years.
Slowly but surely, medical researchers are beginning to fit the pieces of the miscarriage puzzle together. Here is a quick summary of some of the more recent findings.
Alcohol may play a key role in early miscarriage. A seven-year study involving 25,000 women in Denmark revealed that women who consume five servings of alcohol each week increase their risk of miscarriage by 3.7 times. The researchers suspect that alcohol may be responsible for causing chromosomal defects in the developing baby and/or for triggering the release of prostaglandins (hormones that cause the uterus to contract). The takeaway message is obvious: alcohol and babies don't mix.
Folic acid may help to prevent miscarriages. The role of folic acid in helping to prevent open neural tube defects is well established, but a recent study in The Netherlands suggests that folic acid (the synthetic form of the naturally occurring B-vitamin folate) may also help to reduce the risk of early miscarriage. Researchers found that women with lower amounts of folate in their blood were more likely to have experienced recurrent miscarriages than women with higher concentrates of folate.
