Vitamin D deficiency tied to miscarriages, study says

by Sonja Haller, USA Today, May 31, 2018

Miscarriage is so common that it happens to up to 25 percent of all pregnancies, according to the American Pregnancy Association.

In the face of this heartbreak, doctors can often only tell women trying to conceive to wait 10-12 weeks and try again.

The news this week out of the National Institutes of Health is that Vitamin D can reduce the risk of another miscarriage. That is positive news.

Researchers found that women with sufficient levels of Vitamin D were 10 percent more likely to become pregnant and 15 percent more likely to have a live birth after miscarriage. (A miscarriage is the loss of a pregnancy within the first 20 weeks.)

“Our findings suggest that vitamin D may play a role in pregnancy,” said the study’s principal investigator Sunni L. Mumford, in the Epidemiology Branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The study was published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

The study tested Vitamin D blood levels of 1,200 women before pregnancy and again at the eighth week of pregnancy. Vitamin D levels in the eighth week of pregnancy were not linked to pregnancy loss. Researchers defined Vitamin D levels of below 30 nanograms per milliliter as insufficient.

Researchers noted that the study does not prove cause and effect.

More study is needed to determine whether giving vitamin D supplements to women at risk for pregnancy loss could increase their chances of pregnancy and live birth.

Authors of the study noted that research has shown that women who have higher levels of Vitamin D before undergoing in vitro fertilization have higher pregnancy rates than those with lower levels.