Meta-analysis: association of homocysteine with recurrent spontaneous abortion

ABSTRACT

We analyzed the differences in serum homocysteine levels between patients with a history of recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA) and those who had not experienced pregnancy-related complications. To this end, we retrieved literature and data on the association of RSA and serum homocysteine levels published before September 1st 2019 from the PubMed, EMBASE, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wanfang databases. We further narrowed our literature review by focusing on peer-reviewed and full-text literature reporting on studies that used similar research methods and provided raw data or means and standard deviations while reporting results. Utilizing Stata 12.0 for a combined statistical analysis of the data, we assessed the quality of the included literature using the Newcastle Ottawa Scale. Patients who experienced RSA had higher serum homocysteine levels than the controls, with the difference being statistically significant (p < .05). High serum homocysteine levels may be an important risk factor for RSA, indicating that homocysteine may be useful as a noninvasive marker for the diagnosis of recurrent abortions.

KEYWORDS:

• Homocysteine
• meta-analysis
• noninvasive marker
• recurrent spontaneous abortion
• reproduction

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Editage (www.editage.cn) for English language editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the major program of main diseases in Xiamen City by the Xiamen Science and Technology Bureau and the Xiamen Municipal Health Commission [No. 3502Z20179050]; the Xiamen Youth Innovation Talents Project [No. 2015-A-03].