Dec 03, 2014 10:40 AM EST By J Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

Women with vitamin E deficiency are more likely to suffer a miscarriage, according to a recent study.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that pregnant women in Bangladesh with low levels of the most common form of vitamin E are nearly twice as likely to have a miscarriage than those with adequate levels of the vitamin in their blood.

Vitamin E is an important vitamin required for the proper function of many organs in the body. It works as an antioxidant, which means it helps to slow down processes that damage cells. It is found in a variety of foods, though the main source of vitamin E in Bangladesh is believed to be in vegetable oils used in cooking.

"For nearly a century, we have known about vitamin E and its role in the fertility of animals," Kerry Schulze, one of the study leaders and an associate scientist in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a statement. "To our knowledge, this is the first study in humans that has looked at the association of vitamin E and miscarriage. The findings from this study support a role for vitamin E in protecting the embryo and fetus in pregnancy."

For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 1,600 rural Bangladeshi pregnant women in the JiVitA-1 study that ran from 2001 to 2007. Blood samples were taken upon enrollment in the first trimester and any miscarriages were recorded on a weekly basis thereafter. Of the 1,605 women in the study, 141 (8.8 percent) subsequently miscarried.

Pregnant women in developing countries are traditionally not given a prenatal multivitamin like women in the United States typically take before or after becoming pregnant. Instead, the current standard of care is to provide them with iron and folic acid supplements because of the proven links between deficiencies of those nutrients and poor pregnancy outcomes.

"The new findings suggest that having pregnant women consume an adequate amount of vitamin E early in pregnancy could be beneficial," Abu Ahmed Shamim, lead Bangladeshi author of the study, said in a statement.

But since miscarriages occur so early in pregnancy, Shamim said levels of vitamin E ideally need to be boosted in women of childbearing age by improving access to a diverse diet that includes better vitamin E sources so they already have what they need once they become pregnant.

"Vitamin deficiencies are considered a form of hidden hunger because they are not readily apparent but they can have huge health consequences," Schulze added. "What we really want to do is optimize health before women become pregnant, because if they don't start with a good vitamin E status, they are at a high risk of negative outcomes."

The findings are detailed in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

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