{"id":2785,"date":"2025-05-16T15:33:50","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T19:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/?p=2785"},"modified":"2025-05-16T15:33:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T19:33:50","slug":"reduced-progesterone-p4-signalling-causes-inflammation-and-female-infertility-aspirin-or-p4-may-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/?p=2785","title":{"rendered":"Reduced progesterone (P4) signalling causes inflammation and (female) infertility, aspirin or P4 may help"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the years a number of couples who struggled to conceive a child (or carry it to term) have emailed me and invariably, upon testing, the females had low progesterone levels while the males had high estrogen\/prolactin. The high estrogen\/prolactin was also often present in females, which is not surprising in light of their low progesterone. Most of these couples managed to conceive after supplementing with progesterone+DHEA, and in some cases by taking just an aromatase inhibitor (AI) or aspirin (also a decent AI). The study below now reveals a possible mechanism behind all such cases &#8211; i.e. low progesterone (or high estrogen) signalling results in a state of chronic inflammation, which results in non-viable embryos, which either could not properly implant or were spontaneously aborted. Treatment with P4 at a human-equivalent dose of 3.5mg\/kg daily for just a day reversed the inflammatory state, as did treatment with the COX inhibitor carprofen. Carprofen is a drug that is fully exchangeable with aspirin, though with ~2-fold conversion factor, so taking that conversion factor into account and the carprofen dosage used in the study, the human-equivalent daily dose of aspirin would be about 6.5mg\/kg, or literally just 2 tablets ( 2 x 325mg) each for a person weighing 100kg. Since most females weigh way less than that, taking 2 tablets of aspirin daily should be more than enough to replicate the design of the study.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1126\/sciadv.adt6113\">https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1126\/sciadv.adt6113<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2025-05-inflammation-reproductive-tract-linked-infertility.html\">https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2025-05-inflammation-reproductive-tract-linked-infertility.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230;<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Inflammation in the female reproductive tract may make it difficult to conceive a child, but <span style=\"color: #ff0000; text-decoration: underline;\">replenishing a key hormone could keep inflammation in check<\/span><\/strong><\/span>, according to researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000; text-decoration: underline;\">Progesterone<\/span>, nicknamed the &#8220;pregnancy hormone,&#8221; is crucial for embryo growth<\/strong><\/span>, the first stage of fetal development. Using a\u00a0<a class=\"textTag\" href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/mouse+model\/\" rel=\"tag\">mouse model<\/a>, researchers found that <span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;\"><strong>if the body does not have enough proteins to respond to progesterone, there is also increased\u00a0<a class=\"textTag\" style=\"color: #ff0000; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/inflammation\/\" rel=\"tag\">inflammation<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. It&#8217;s still unclear if these low protein levels cause inflammation to occur. &#8220;What we do know is that <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>inflammation is bad for\u00a0<a class=\"textTag\" href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/embryo+development\/\" rel=\"tag\">embryo development<\/a><\/strong><\/span>,&#8221; study author Joy Winuthayanon said. &#8220;Embryos are highly sensitive to any stressors in their environment. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>When we treated the inflammation, more embryos survived long enough to implant themselves in the uterus<\/strong><\/span>.&#8221; These findings could help improve women&#8217;s chances of becoming pregnant. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>More than 60% of pregnancy losses occur in the first 4\u20136 weeks, which is often before most patients are aware they are pregnant<\/strong><\/span>. Understanding the early stages of the embryo&#8217;s development could help save more pregnancies, especially for women with certain conditions like\u00a0<a class=\"textTag\" href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/pelvic+inflammatory+disease\/\" rel=\"tag\">pelvic inflammatory disease<\/a>. &#8220;<span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;\"><strong>Women with low\u00a0<a class=\"textTag\" style=\"color: #ff0000; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/progesterone\/\" rel=\"tag\">progesterone<\/a> or inflammation in the reproductive system typically have more difficulty conceiving and becoming pregnant<\/strong><\/span>,&#8221; co-author Dr. Mark Hunter said. &#8220;This research presents a potential explanation and opens the door to possible treatments.&#8221; Winuthayanon says future research will focus on developing effective, convenient and noninvasive anti-inflammatory treatments, which could include a new medication or an injection.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the years a number of couples who struggled to conceive a child (or carry it to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[326,2107,980,12,1467,1840,92,153],"class_list":["post-2785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-aspirin","tag-embryo","tag-infertility","tag-inflammation","tag-nsaid","tag-p4","tag-pregnancy","tag-progesterone","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2786,"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785\/revisions\/2786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}