STRESS has often been blamed for miscarriages in early pregnancy, despite a lack of good data. Now a study of women in rural Guatemala has provided the first evidence that high levels of the stress hormone cortisol do indeed cause early miscarriage.
Pablo Nepomnaschy at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Triangle Park, North Carolina, and his colleagues followed 61 women for a year. Most of the women were in their early 20s and all had had at least one infant who they were still breastfeeding. The mothers were poor, did not get enough to eat and were…
