Here's good news for females who have experienced multiple miscarriages and all the pain it entails.

Even among the more than 80% women who've had two or more miscarriages will eventually have a successful pregnancy with supportive care.

Even though miscarriage is common, there have been relatively few well-conducted researches on its causes as well as treatments, Ruth Lathi, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Stanford University Medical Centre, said.

She said, "We can do better than this. We need more research."

Around 40-50% of miscarriages have no particular cause. A few of the causes of miscarriages have been pinpointed. Endocrine problems such as thyroid disease are responsible for 15-20 percent of miscarriages.

- Hypercoagulability, an increased tendency to develop blood clots, also causes 15-20 percent; maternal abnormalities in the uterus or cervix cause 10-15 percent.

- Maternal genetic mutation causes 2-5 percent; and in 0.5-5 percent of cases, infection triggers a miscarriage. Older age and a history of previous miscarriages also increase the risk.

Some of the causes of miscarriages can be detected and handled. For females having thyroid problem, proper treatment lessens the chance of miscarriage and other adverse outcomes.

Researchers conducted recently have also shown that in selected women who have anti-thyroid antibodies, proper treatment with the thyroid hormone levothyroxine can effectively lessen chances of miscarriage.

Women who have hypercoagulability can be treated with therapies that interfere with blood clot formation, most commonly aspirin or heparin or both.

Sun Kim, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Stanford said that body weight is the other contributing factor.

Study discovers that being obese or underweight significantly increases pregnancy complications and the risk of miscarriage, said a Stanford release.

Given that one-third of Americans are obese, the impact of obesity on pregnancy outcomes is a growing public-health concern, Kim said.

"Losing weight is hard, I don't deny that," she said. But she added that even moderate weight loss of 5-10% can significantly cut the chance of miscarriage. (With Inputs from Agencies)