Morning sickness makes pregnant women feel miserable in the first few months of pregnancy but findings of a new research have shown that nausea and vomiting could indicate that the baby is healthy and normal, at least in women with history of miscarriage.
In a new study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine on Sept. 26, researchers have found that in pregnant women who have experienced pregnancy loss, enduring nausea and vomiting during subsequent pregnancy attempts is associated with increased odds of success.
The study in particular found that women who experienced morning sickness were between 50 percent and 75 percent less likely to suffer from pregnancy loss.
Study researcher Stefanie Hinkle, from the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and colleagues noted that as many as four in five pregnant women report vomiting or nausea during pregnancy.
Morning sickness is often cited as indicative of a healthy pregnancy but its exact cause remains elusive and experts are not certain if it is merely a side effect of pregnancy or it has some specific purpose.
To find out if morning sickness is indeed a healthy sign for expecting mothers, the researchers looked at 797 newly pregnant women with history of pregnancy loss. Almost 24 percent of the women, or 188 of the total number of participants, had unsuccessful pregnancy.
The researchers observed that women who experienced nausea had 50 percent reduced risk for miscarriage while those who experienced vomiting had 75 percent less likelihood to have unsuccessful pregnancy, suggesting that morning sickness is a positive sign during pregnancy.
"These findings overcome prior analytic and design limitations and represent the most definitive data available, to our knowledge, indicating the protective association of nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy on the risk for pregnancy loss and thus may provide reassurance to women experiencing these difficult symptoms in pregnancy," the researchers wrote in their study.
The study did not provide an explanation why women who had the symptoms have increased chances for successful pregnancy. Nonetheless, it is possible that vomiting and nausea are a way for the body to tell women to change their diets during pregnancy. It is also possible that a surge in pregnancy hormones set off these symptoms.
Noel Strong, from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, pointed to changing hormones in newly pregnant women, particularly in levels of the pregnancy hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG).
