British scientist ‘excited’ by miscarriage study –
another false dawn
Today (June 21, 2005) the British media is alive with articles
with titles such as ‘£1 cure for miscarriage.’, given the speed of
modern communications, these same stories will be in the American
press in hours.
On further reading, it appears that Dr Siobhan Quenby (Liverpool
University) has given patients a steroid, which suppresses the
immune system, as scientists believe, ‘an overreaction of the immune
system may lead a woman’s body to attack a developing embryo and
thus terminate the pregnancy.’ The results, at first glance, appear
exciting.
Dr Quenby is quoted as saying, ‘So many women feel doctors are
brushing them off because they say there is nothing they can do. The
fact that we are trying something gives them real hope. Without
this, they would simply have no options.’
As the author of A New Dawn, I take exception to Dr Quenby’s
comments for two reasons. Firstly, Dr Quenby is offering women a
steroid that, according to The State of California, Environmental
Protection Agency (August 20, 1999), is ‘known to cause cancer or
reproductive toxicity’ (my emphasis). The steroid in question is
Prednisalone.
This may appear perverse by my second charge is even more important,
I believe that Dr Quenby is guilty of ‘dereliction of duty’ in her
rush to expose desperate women to a known hostile agent. The first
step in any research project, having determined the subject to be
researched, is a literature search. Before the Internet became
available, this was a tortuous undertaking requiring hours, if not
weeks, searching through micro-fiche copies of the learned journals,
today it takes a couple of ‘key-words’ and ten minutes on Pubmed or
any of the other medical search engines.
Had Dr Quenby and her team bothered with this scientific nicety they
would have discovered that their work is, in fact, far from a
‘breakthrough’, that the ‘overreaction of the immune system’ has
been mapped (and is far more comprehensive than they appear to
appreciate) and that women do have options that can be exercised
before they are encouraged to take Prednisalone, options that
address each of the four major pathways by which inflammation
threatens miscarriage – making miscarriage, recurrent or not,
entirely preventable. A simple literature search would also have
revealed that inflammation also underwrites infertility, PCOS, pre-eclampsia
and prematurity.
As I say in A New Dawn
(p29), ‘sadly, when presented with compelling evidence, modern
medicine normally looks forward to a pharmaceutical treatment rather
than backwards to cause.’ Prednisalone is so obviously not a drug of
choice for those who suffer miscarriage that its use beggars belief.
Do not take my word for it, www.rxlist contains a horrifying
catalogue of warnings and known side effects including (but not
exclusively):
an immediate warning should curtail any interest if it is read in
context. Women of childbearing age invariably mix with other women
with young children, thus exposing themselves to chicken pox and
measles – these can be fatal if contracted while taking Prednisalone!
As if that were not enough the drug can enhance the effects of
hypothyroidism and cirrhosis. It can induce mood swings, personality
changes, severe depression and frank psychotic manifestations.
Anyone with ulcerative colitis should take care as ulcer perforation
risk is increased. Recorded side effects include sodium retention,
fluid retention, congestive heart failure, potassium loss,
hypertension, pancreatitis, latent diabetes and decreased
carbohydrate tolerance and convulsions. Menstrual irregularities,
headaches, increased sweating and abdominal distention only add to
the misery.
Is this yet another false dawn for those who suffer so much? The
answer is, ‘no’. Dr Quenby has the right diagnosis, merely the wrong
treatment.
In A New Dawn, I report
on four different ways in which inflammation causes miscarriage –
and one sure way of removing them all to allow any woman to
successful carry to full term.
Target 1
Low progesterone
Progesterone is required for successful implantation and must remain
at an elevated level to ensure that parturition does not prematurely
– a decrease in progesterone is the natural trigger for labor.
Inflammation involves the generation of the TNF alpha by the white
cells, which reduces progesterone leading to re-absorption in early
pregnancy and miscarriage and premature birth.
Elevated levels of insulin, resulting from insulin resistance
(itself caused by inflammation), also reduce the level of available
progesterone.
Target 2
Placental inflammation
Chronic inflammation is caused by chronic immune activation. The
strength of the immune response can be increased by ‘complement
activation’. TNF alpha can manufacture C5a (part of the ‘complement
cascade) which one researcher called, ‘the key mediator in fetal
injury.’
The immune system is design to hunt down and kill ‘non-self’, a
fetus is partially ‘non-self’ (as it is derived, at least in part,
from the father). To allow the fetus to grow in safety, the immune
system switches from a state known as Th1 to Th2 (a state reserved
for wound healing and pregnancy). Constant immune activation
reverses this leaving the fetus at the mercy of the Th1 type
immunity.
Target 3
Increased blood viscosity
In a wonderfully complex and orchestrated manner, detailed in
A New Dawn, C5a attracts
more white cells and thus more TNF alpha and free oxidizing radicals
(FOR), this eventually leads to hypoxia. The immune response also
damages the lining of blood vessels, the endothelium, generating
platelet-activating factor (PAF) which is strongly pro-thrombotic.
Both hypoxia and thrombosis result in growth restriction (hypoxia
also promotes the generation of more PAF from the endothelial
cells).
55 percent of all miscarriages are thought to be caused by increased
blood viscosity.
Target 4
Endothelial micro-particles
Damaged endothelial cells give off micro-particles – these are
pro-inflammatory, i.e. they attract further white cells, and pro-thrombotic.
Micro-particles can easily intensify and prolong the immune response
leading to miscarriage.
With four potential targets this may seem like a recipe for an
entire pharmacopoeia but nothing could be further from the truth.
A New Dawn details the
response and shows how they are the result of persistent immune
activation, perhaps more importantly it also shows how the cause of
persistent immune activation can be detected and removed.
The chapter on miscarriage ends by saying, ‘supposed failure to
conceive and recurrent miscarriage are devastating. But they HAVE NO
REASON TO EXIST. Despite the trauma involved and the seeming
multiple threats to the embryo, the situation is very simple.
Persistent immune activation is the common theme that links these
disparate pathologies. In Chapter 6 (of
A New Dawn) you will find
the means of preventing such activation. Should you choose to take
advantage of this knowledge you can look forward to a massively
increase chance of delivering as many healthy babies as you desire.’
As a society we have become conditioned to expect solutions to come
in a child-proof screw-capped bottle provided by our MD. As Dr
Quenby rightly observes, ‘so many women feel doctors are brushing
them off because they say there is nothing they can do’ but now the
answer lies in your own hands – not by taking Prenisalone and
playing Russian roulette with chickenpox but by understanding your
own body. You do not need the sanction of your MD, just the
willpower to discover what they refuse to see. Dr Quenby’s work is a
false dawn but one that will grab the headlines now and in another
three months when it reappears in a clutch of women’s magazines, by
then, you could be happily and safely pregnant. Good luck.