Construction of machine learning tools to predict threatened miscarriage in the first trimester based on AEA, progesterone and β-hCG in China: a multicentre, observational, case-control study

BACKGROUND: Endocannabinoid anandamide (AEA), progesterone (P4) and β-human chorionic gonadotrophin (β-hCG) are associated with the threatened miscarriage in the early stage. However, no study has investigated whether combing these three hormones could predict threatened miscarriage. Thus, we aim to establish machine learning models utilizing these three hormones to predict threatened miscarriage risk. METHODS: This is a multicentre, observational, case-control study involving 215 pregnant women. We recruited 119 normal pregnant women and 96 threatened miscarriage pregnant women including 58 women with ongoing pregnancy and 38 women with inevitable miscarriage. P4 and β-hCG levels were detected by chemiluminescence immunoassay assay. The level of AEA was tested by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Six predictive machine learning models were established and evaluated by the confusion matrix, area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC), accuracy and precision. RESULTS: The median concentration of AEA was significantly lower in the healthy pregnant women group than that in the threatened miscarriage group, while the median concentration of P4 was significantly higher in the normal pregnancy group than that in the threatened miscarriage group. Only the median level of P4 was significantly lower in the inevitable miscarriage group than that in the ongoing pregnancy group. Moreover, AEA is strongly positively correlated with threatened miscarriage, while P4 is negatively correlated with both threatened miscarriage and inevitable miscarriage. Interestingly, AEA and P4 are negatively correlated with each other. Among six models, logistic regression (LR), support vector machine (SVM) and multilayer perceptron (MLP) models obtained the AUC values of 0.75, 0.70 and 0.70, respectively; and their accuracy and precision were all above 0.60. Among these three models, the LR model showed the highest accuracy (0.65) and precision (0.70) to predict threatened miscarriage. CONCLUSIONS: The LR model showed the highest overall predictive power, thus machine learning combined with the level of AEA, P4 and β-hCG might be a new approach to predict the threatened miscarriage risk in the near feature. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12884-022-05025-y.