A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine offered the strongest evidence to data linking nausea and vomiting in pregnancy to a reduced risk of miscarriage.
While researchers previously linked morning sickness to a lower risk of pregnancy loss, prior studies only enrolled women with clinically recognized pregnancies, thereby overlooking early miscarriages.
For the study, researchers examined data from the National Institutes of Health Effects of Aspirin in Gestation and Reproduction (EAGeR) trial, in which researchers tested whether taking daily low-dose aspirin could reduce the risk of pregnancy loss in women who previously experienced a miscarriage.\
Of the 797 women in the trial with positive pregnancy tests, 188 ended in loss. By week eight of pregnancy, 57.3 percent of the women reported nausea and 26.6 percent reported nausea and vomiting. These study participants were 50 to 75 percent less likely to experience a miscarriage.
"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," said the study's first author, Stefanie N. Hinkle, PhD, a staff scientist with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the NIH. "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."
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