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Morning Sickness Linked With a Lower Risk of Miscarriage

NIH (National Institues of Health) provides the “strongest evidence to date” that nausea and vomiting indicate a healthy pregnancy.

| 2 min read

NIH (National Institues of Health) provides the “strongest evidence to date” that nausea and vomiting indicate a healthy pregnancy.

Doctors are still unsure of what exactly causes morning sickness, but increased hormone levels and reduced blood sugar are some of the more common explanations. The severity of morning sickness varies among women, but a new study highlights a silver lining to the unpleasant side-effect of pregnancy: morning sickness is linked with a lower risk of having a miscarriage.

Interestingly, past research has suggested that morning sickness, in fact, protects the fetus from potentially harmful toxins in certain foods and beverage. As LiveScience explains, morning sickness can be triggered by “the sight, smell, or taste of meats and strong-tasting vegetables, which were historically likely to contain foodborne microbes or birth-defect-inducing chemicals.”

SEE ALSO: Drinking During Pregnancy Increases Risk of Alcoholism in Next 3 Generations, Research Finds

Now, a new analysis performed by researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) provides the “strongest evidence to date” that nausea and vomiting during pregnancy is linked with a reduced risk of miscarriage, according to a press release.

“It’s a common thought that nausea indicates a healthy pregnancy, but there wasn’t a lot of high-quality evidence to support this belief,” first author Stefanie Hinkle, a staff scientist in NICHD’s Epidemiology Branch, said in the release. “Our study evaluates symptoms from the earliest weeks of pregnancy, immediately after conception, and confirms that there is a protective association between nausea and vomiting and a lower risk of pregnancy loss.”

To come to their findings, the researchers analyzed data from a previous trial, called the Effects of Aspirin in Gestation and Reproduction (EAGeR). The study participants kept daily diaries of their experiences of nausea and vomiting throughout the 2nd to the 8th weeks of their pregnancies. Additionally, the women responded to a monthly questionnaire about their symptoms through the 36th week of pregnancy.

The data showed that a total of 797 women had positive pregnancy tests, with 188 pregnancies resulting in a miscarriage. The women who reported experiencing nausea or nausea with vomiting by the 8th week of pregnancy — 57.3 percent and 26.6 percent respectively — were 50 to 75 percent less likely to have a pregnancy loss than those who hadn’t experienced those symptoms.

The research appears in JAMA Internal Medicine.

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