Study population
Patients who were subjected to a visit at the Fertility Center of Shenzhen Zhongshan Urology Hospital, China, from January 2016 to October 2017 were enrolled in this study. Women who experienced two or more consecutive habitual miscarriage were included in the RM group, while fertile women who experienced at least one successful pregnancy without any abortions were included in the control group. An initial investigation was performed in all women before the recruitment and included the collection of information regarding the medical history, karyotype analysis, systemic and gynecological examination, and endocrine examinations.
The exclusion criteria were the following: patients with (1) abnormal chromosome karyotype; (2) infection with toxoplasma gondii, syphilis, HIV, hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, rubella virus, cytomegalovirus or herpes virus ; (3) genital tract malformations; (4) abnormal endocrine hormone level; (5) a male infertile partner. All the enrolled patients were not pregnant and they did not receive any drug therapy when the peripheral blood was collected. According to the above screening criteria, 49 patients with RM and 11 fertile women were recruited in this study.
This study was performed according to the “Declaration of Helsinki”, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of Shenzhen Zhongshan Urology Hospital. All patients enrolled in this study provided written informed consent.