Relationship between helicobacter pylori infection and spontaneous abortion

Helicobacter pylori (HP) infection may be having no clinical symptoms
and if not treated will be persisting. This infection was considered as gastric diseases
even during pregnancy. During the last decade its relationship with pregnancy relateddisorders
has been strongly reported in literature. In this study we evaluated the effect
of positive IgG and CagA strains helicobacter pylori on incidence of early spontaneous
abortions.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out on 100 women were referred to
health centers and Motahari Hospital, Urmia, Iran, from October 2012 to March 2013.
Fifty women with first miscarriage as cases and 50 women with previous normal delivery
as controls were studied. A 2-cc blood sample was taken from each patient to
evaluate the specific IgG titer by ELISA method. All results of samples with positive H.
pylori IgG, were assayed for anti-CagA, IgG antibodies. A questionnaire was filled for
each subject. The associations between CagA positive cases with odds of spontaneous
abortion incidence were analyzed by using SPSS software, ver. 19 (Chicago, IL, USA).
Results: Mean (±SD) of age were 21.0±5.78 and 30.78±5.10 years for cases and controls
group respectively. There was no significant difference in mean of age (P=0.25),
and parity (P=1) between two groups. H. pylori IgG antibodies were positive among 23
and 24 (46% vs. 48%) in women with aborted and normal pregnancy respectively. Relationship
between IgG status and miscarriage was not significant (OR=0.92, CI95%:
0.39-2.17, P=0.84). In particular anti-CagA antibodies were positive among 18 and
13(78.3% vs. 54.2%) in women with aborted and normal pregnancy respectively.
Among women with CagA positive strains had higher odds of miscarriage (OR=3.05,
CI95%: 0.73-13.76, P=0.08), but it wasn’t significant.
Conclusion: According to the result of this study there was not any association between
HP infection and miscarriage. We recommend more studies with larger sample size for
determining the effect of CagA positive strains on miscarriage