A team of scientists from the National Medical Research Center for Hematology of the Ministry of Health of Russia presented the results of a large-scale study devoted to one of the most complex problems of modern medicine — the management of pregnancy in patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms.
The results of the study, prepared by the center's staff under the supervision of the head of the Department for the Standardization of Treatment Methods of Hematological Diseases, Doctor of Medical Sciences A.L. Melikyan, and the head of the Information and Analytical Division, Candidate of Technical Sciences S.M. Kulikov, were presented as a poster report at the annual congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA), which took place in the Swedish capital from the 11th to the 14th of June 2026.
The focus of the researchers' attention was the analysis of 165 pregnancies in 122 patients with Ph-negative MPNs followed at the NMRC for Hematology from 2014 to 2024. As the authors of the work noted, pregnancy with diagnoses such as essential thrombocythemia (ET), polycythemia vera (PV) and primary myelofibrosis (PMF) has traditionally been associated with high risks of miscarriage and stillbirth. The overall live birth rate in the analyzed cohort was 67.8%, with outcomes directly depending on the disease subtype and the chosen therapeutic strategy.
The key result of the work was a comparison of the effectiveness of different treatment regimens. The highest live birth rate (91.7%) was achieved with a combination of low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) and acetylsalicylic acid (ASA). Triple therapy (interferon-alpha + LMWH + ASA) showed an effectiveness of 77.4%. At the same time, monotherapy with acetylsalicylic acid alone proved to be the least effective — the live birth rate in this group was only 56.5%.
“Our study demonstrates that the treatment strategy directly affects a patient's chances of successfully carrying and delivering a child. The statistically significant improvement in outcomes with the addition of low-molecular-weight heparin (p=0.02) and the clear trend toward improvement with interferon-alpha therapy suggest that approaches to monotherapy need to be reconsidered in favor of combination, risk-adapted regimens,” commented the authors of the poster report: Treatment Strategies and Live Birth Rates in MPN Pregnancies: A Single-Center Analysis of 165 Pregnancies.
The data presented at the congress by the authors: K.T. Pogosyan, A.L. Melikyan, S.E. Starchenko, E.A. Gilyazitdinova, I.N. Subortseva, E.S. Polushkina, and S.M. Kulikov are of significant importance for the development of clinical guidelines, emphasizing that the use of acetylsalicylic acid alone without additional cytoreductive and anticoagulant support may be insufficient in this category of patients.
