However, Hughes said, APS can be treated, sometimes simply with aspirin, or with other medication to thin the blood. For example, treatment coupled with intense prenatal monitoring of expecting women with APS and lupus increasing the rate of live births from 19 to 70 percent, Hughes said. APS' symptoms include blood clots in the veins or arteries in the leg, arm, kidney, liver, lung, brain, heart or other organs, recurrent miscarriages and low platelet counts. It is these blood clots, Hughes believes, that lead to miscarriage, by blocking the placenta, causing the death of the fetus which results in the miscarriage. Hughes states that antiphospholipid antibody blood tests should be a part of all pre-natal checks.
Pregnancy loss is an extremely traumatic experience and here is a potentially treatable cause.
Hughes also implicates the lupus-like syndrome as a cause of stroke, noting that lupus is a model for accelerated blood vessel blockage. Strokes or cerebral hemorrhages, Hughes noted, are a major health concern in the U.K. as well as the United States where stroke is the third leading cause of death and kills 159,791 people a year, according to National Vital Statistics Report. Many of these strokes could be prevented by testing for APS, Hughes emphasized. In other cases, the effect of APS is more subtle, Hughes said. Some patients simply have memory loss, he said, and believe they have Alzheimer's Disease.