Insulin resistance in women with recurrent miscarriage: a systematic review and meta-analysis

PURPOSE: This review aimed to investigate the association of insulin resistance (IR) in women with recurrent pregnancy loss compared to women with normal pregnancy history. METHODS: PubMed, EMBASE, the Web of Science and Google Scholar databases were accessed to collect published observational studies that compared IR of recurrent pregnancy loss women with healthy women until the 6(th) of October 2022. Outcomes assessed in this review and meta-analysis included fasting blood glucose, fasting plasma insulin, homeostasis model assessment for IR, glucose to insulin ratio. Mean differences, odds ratios with 95% confidence interval were pooled using the fixed or random effect models. Sensitivity analyses were performed to validate the robustness of the results. Review Manager version 5.4.1 and Stata version 8.0 were used. RESULTS: A total of nineteen studies involving 4453 individuals were included. Recurrent pregnancy loss patients presented significantly higher fasting blood glucose, fasting plasma insulin, homeostasis model assessment for IR, and lower glucose to insulin ratios. Additionally, recurrent pregnancy loss patients had higher rates of IR as defined by abnormal fasting plasma insulin, homeostasis model assessment for IR, and glucose to insulin ratio. Sensitivity analyses validated the robustness of the results. CONCLUSION: In the current review, we show that recurrent pregnancy loss is associated with a higher degree of IR and highlight the importance of screening and treatment of IR. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12884-022-05256-z.