Joy Winuthayanon was a midwife "in a previous life."
“I've always been interested in looking at pregnancy and how to care for one, so I went and did a PhD,” Winuthayanon said. “So, in our lab, that's why we're trying to focus on, looking at, maybe identifying potential causes that are unknown for infertility in women.”
The group recently released a study that explores possible causes of infertility and pregnancy loss in mice during the first days post-conception – while the embryo is still in the fallopian tubes [oviduct] and has not yet implanted in the uterus.
“We found that inflammation, if too much is going on in the oviduct, it ends up having a detrimental effect to the embryos,” Winuthayanon said. “We also found that if we inhibit or prevent this inflammation, the embryo survives at a better rate.”
According to the research, about 40% of the mice embryos in the study were either non-viable or developmentally delayed if there was too much inflammation.
She said this excess inflammation in the mice was found to be related to low progesterone levels.
Progesterone, according to the National Institutes of Health, is a hormone that plays a key role in menstrual cycles and pregnancy.
"We found that low progesterone action can lead to this inflammation," Winuthayanon said, "This inflammation can lead to developmentally delayed embryos at the early stage."
But, Winuthayanon cautioned, there are many other possible causes of inflammation in the reproductive tract of humans, such as endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease or a history of chlamydia.
Winuthayanon said the next steps are to see if their research translates to human pregnancy loss.
She added this current study was not about finding a cure, at the moment, but she hopes it could lead to treatments in the future.
“One key things I want to highlight, especially for women out there, is that if you are having trouble conceiving, go check in with your OB-GYN to see whether there is inflammation that you do not know [about] within your body that is kind of preventing you from becoming pregnant,” Winuthayanon said.
