Aspirin May Help Women Taking IVF Treatments Become Pregnant

Good old reliable aspirin has many uses, besides what it was designed to do, relive pain. It had been shown that, when taken daily it could lower the risk of having a heart attack, stroke, and other conditions that are associated with proper blood flow. Of course, there are in inevitable side effects like kidney failure, bleeding problems and certain kinds of strokes. But there is one thing the researchers say it cannot do and that is to help women who are taking in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments become pregnant. Or can it?

There has been talk going around about taking low does aspirin to improve blood flow to the uterus and thereby improving the ovaries responses to the treatments.

All of the research that has been previously done has come up with inconsistent results. Some have shown that the aspirin does work, other show just the opposite and still others show that it could increase the rate of miscarriages.

In the latest research, they have looked at the figures from 1,449 women who were taking either in vitro fertilization or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) treatments. There were two groups in the studies, one that was taking low dose aspirin and the other either took a placebo or had no treatment at all. The studies were done in different countries, two of them in the United States and others in Hong Kong, Iran and Finland.

The results showed that there was no appreciable difference in the pregnancy rates in women who took the aspirin compared to those who were not taking anything, or taking the placebo. There were no significant differences in the rates of live births. This figure was only measured in two of the studies.

The researchers still say that there is not enough evidence to give a definite answer, one way or the other.

For example, looking at one of the studies, they found that 45% of the women who took the aspirin got pregnant, while in the control group it was 28%, however the data was not strong enough for them to recommend the aspirin as a routine treatment.

They do not plan to do any more studies until and unless they are able to say if the aspirin has either a good or bad effect.

Randall Hines, M.D., director of the division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at the University of Mississippi Medical Center agrees with the researchers that there need to be further research, but at the same time there is no need for programs that are using the aspirin therapy to cease doing so. He feels that it may help some patients and that it does no harm.

He also states that researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which is a division of the National Institutes of Health, have just completed a study that makes the picture even more cloudy. The lead researcher Vanessa Poustie, Ph.D., at the Institute for Child Health at the University of Liverpool in England can speak from experience because she herself took low does aspirin while undergoing IVF treatment.

Source : McGill University http://www.newswise.com/