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 related- disorders 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. 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). 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. 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.