Front page news from the daily Telegraph (10/01/20) reports on a study reported in the online Journal EBioMedicine.
The Headline suggests a breakthrough in the prevention of the very common and distressing problem of miscarriage.
Sitagliptin, a dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP)-IV inhibitor approved for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, is widely used and has also been shown to have anti-inflammatory and immune effects.
In this study they sampled the endometrium in women given the drug or placebo and found that there were immunological changes in the endometrium, which might possibly benefit implantation of the fertilised embryo.
The sample size was small and only 25 women became pregnant after the trial so the results must be treated with caution.
Of the 12 women who became pregnant following treatment with the drug 3 miscarried and of the 13 women given placebo 6 miscarried.
This is a promising result. It shows that the take home baby rates are high for all women with recurrent miscarriage regardless of treatment and should be reassuring to women suffering from this problem.
Larger studies are needed before we can properly assess the role of this drug in miscarriage prevention.
