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Women with recurrent pregnancy loss could reduce their stress with emotion-focused strategies

Cr. Matteo Di iorio

Source from MIMS.com

According to the data presented at ESHRE 2020, perceived stress in women who had recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) could be reduced by meditation and mindfulness interventions.

Karen Kirchheiner from Hdidovre Hospital in Denmark, stated that studies have shown perceived stress and moderate-to-severe depression are more prevalent in women with RPL than other women trying to conceive.

“A 7-week meditation and mindfulness programme significantly reduced perceived stress [vs] a standard supportive care programme for women with RPL,” she said.

The researchers in the study randomized 76 women, 1:1 to receive supportive care alone or with a 7-week meditation and mindfulness programme facilitated by an authorized instructor. Daily guided audio of meditation for 10-20 minutes were also instructed for the women in the intervention arm while women in the control arm were instructed against meditation; 63 women completed the study.

Mean perceived stress significantly dropped from baseline in both the intervention and the control arms at 7 weeks with intervention outweighed the control protocol in terms of perceived stress reduction for between-group comparison.

The between-group difference was not significant as the perceived stress levels remained low in both intervention and control arms at 12 months vs baseline.

Women in the intervention arm had a significant reduction in personal stress from baseline, which were based on COMPI-FPSS scores at week 7. No significant differences were seen in the other two domains despite the reduced scores.

Consistent numerical reductions were seen across all COMPI-FPSS domains with the intervention protocol at 12 months, 9.2 to 8.7 points, and 7.9 to 7.6 points with only the social domain score reduction was statistically significant.

At week 7, depression was reported at baseline, dropping to none for two women in the intervention and at 12 months, only one had depression. However, these reductions did not equate to statistical significance.

Kirchheiner stated that there are no any significant decrease in depression in all three timelines and underlined that the study was not powered to detect differences in Major Depression Index (MDI).

“[Nevertheless, our studies suggest that] guided self-administered meditations could be a useful tool in the care for women experiencing RPL …. We now have a documented tool to reduce perceived stress. The question now is how to implement this in our clinical practice,” she concluded.

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