Background: Glucocorticoids have been suggested as a potential therapy in refractory obstetric antiphospholipid syndrome (oAPS). Our aims were to describe a cohort of patients with oAPS treated with low-dose glucocorticoids and to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis evaluating the effects of additional glucocorticoids on the pregnancy outcomes in oAPS patients.
Methods: Retrospective study that included 11 women diagnosed with primary antiphospholipid syndrome. The meta-analysis was conducted by fitting random effects models and was checked for heterogeneity.
Results: All women had suffered from early pregnancy losses and two also had a history of fetal deaths. We studied 47 pregnancies that resulted in 32 abortions (68.1%) and 3 fetal deaths (6.4%). Twenty-six pregnancies were under treatment, mainly LDA and LMWH. Low-dose glucocorticoids were indicated in 13 pregnancies (always in association with LDA and LMWH). There was a decrease in pregnancy loss in those patients treated with LDA and LMWH. Treatment with glucocorticoids significantly increased the rate of successful pregnancy (38.5% abortions in treated vs 85.3% abortions in non-treated pregnancies; p=0.003). After multivariate GEE analysis, only glucocorticoids remained inversely associated with pregnancy loss (OR=0.157, (CI 0.025-0.968, p=0.046)). The meta-analysis showed that glucocorticoids tended to improve the frequency of successful pregnancy (OR= 0.509 (0.252-1.028), p=0.06). Three cases of gestational diabetes and one of preeclampsia were observed in our cohort. The meta-analysis, which mostly included studies using high-dose steroids, showed that glucocorticoids increased not only the frequency of preeclampsia and gestational diabetes, but also the rate of pre-term birth.
Conclusions: The efficacy of low-dose glucocorticoids in addition to the standard therapy in patients with refractory oAPS should be confirmed in well-designed clinical trials. However, high doses of steroids significantly increase the frequency of maternal and fetal morbidities, making their use strongly inadvisable.
Keywords: glucocorticoids; obstetric antiphospholipid syndrome; recurrent pregnancy loss; treatment.