PRESS RELEASE: Pilot study marks beginning of landmark research into multiple miscarriages.

With Infertility Awareness Month behind us, it’s a timely reminder that miscarriages affect 1 in 4 women, or one miscarriage happens every 44 minutes worldwide. Last week, the QLD Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk announced that she had previously had a miscarriage and is conducting a review into how women with recurrent miscarriage are treated and what strategies we should put in place to support them.

The University of Technology Sydney is conducting a pilot study testing different folate types to improve pregnancy success in couples that have had multiple miscarriages.
Folate is important to prevent neural tube defects and is currently recommended to all women who are hoping to get pregnant or are pregnant. New research is emerging that suggests women with recurrent miscarriage might need a different form of folate.
A recent paper published in the Journal of Nutrition last month titled, ‘Higher than recommended folic acid intakes is associated with high folate status throughout pregnancy” concluded that “Most pregnant individuals had elevated serum total folate concentrations, reflecting total folic acid intakes above the upper limit and this is driven by supplement use”.

The Upper limit was deemed to be 1,000mcg by the institute of medicine in the United States and in the last year several research papers have highlighted that most women taking a supplement with folic acid are exceeding this dose.

“We traditionally have always recommended the use of folic acid, but this needs to be converted to a more active form to be used by the body, so we are investigating if some women do better on a more activated form to prevent miscarriage and stop it building up,” says lead author Carolyn Ledowsky, a University of Technology Sydney-based PhD candidate.
She is conducting a pilot study for women with multiple miscarriage, where one group of women and their partners will receive a folic acid based multivitamin and the other group will receive a methyl folate-based multivitamin.
“This pilot study will help us design a bigger, more statistically significant trial to help general practitioners and doctors understand if they should be prescribing folic acid or methyl folate. We want to make sure we are using the most effective type of folate to prevent miscarriages and for those people experiencing recurrent loss there are guidelines and changes that they may be able to make to improve pregnancy success”.