According to a small study of 61 women in rural Guatemala, high levels of the stress hormone cortisol may cause miscarriage. Mothers with increased levels of this hormone were three times more likely to have a miscarriage than mothers that didn’t show increases in stress hormones.
The researchers found that women whose cortisol levels significantly increased over their baseline during the first three weeks of pregnancy were 2.7 times more likely to suffer a pregnancy loss than women with no cortisol increase. Nine of 10 pregnancies to women with high cortisol levels ended in miscarriage, compared with only four of 12 to women with stable cortisol.
(Source: New Scientist)