The new guidelines state that women with a higher risk of a miscarriage in England will be offered a hormone drug.
Certain women can be offered a drug to help prevent a baby from being born.
The move was welcomed by charities that said it would save babies lives and spare parents grief. The drug would only be appropriate for some women, and not every woman, Nice warned.
It is devastating for a woman to experience a miscarriage, so we are pleased to recommend progesterone for those women who experience bleeding in early pregnancy and who have had at least one miscarriage as a new treatment option.
The committee has called for more research to be done in this area because the evidence shows that progesterone won't be able to prevent every miscarriage. It will be of benefit to some women and an inexpensive treatment option can be made available to women on the National Health Service.
Women who have previously had a miscarriage and have a pregnant woman who is bleeding can be offered 400mg of progesterone twice a day. If a foetal heartbeat is confirmed, treatment with progesterone should continue until 16 weeks of pregnancy have been completed.
There are 7,200 women who could be eligible for treatment with progesterone each year.
The committee said that the hormone should not be offered to women with early pregnancies, previous miscarriages or current pregnancies if they have bleeding in the current pregnancy. There was more research called for in these areas.
There was no evidence of harm to the mother or baby from the use of progesterone, although the evidence is insufficient to rule out the possibility of rare events.
Jane Brewin, the chief executive of Tommy's, said that it was great to see Nice taking their research into account in their new guidelines which will help save babies' lives. We can't do anything about it, even if some healthcare professionals don't know the latest evidence.
We hear from women who were denied treatment when they should have been eligible, because their doctor wasn't familiar with it, so we hope Nice's recommendation will help end some of these inequalities in miscarriage care that add more pain to an already unbearable experience.
The director of Tommy's National Centre for Miscarriage Research at the University of Birmingham said that the new guidelines from Nice include a very welcome change after many years of research.
We know that progesterone is a robust and effective treatment option, but it is not yet reaching everyone who might benefit from it. This new recommendation from Nice is an important step in tackling the current variation in miscarriage services across the country and preventing these losses wherever possible.
The president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said that the advice in the new Nice guideline on ectopic pregnancies and miscarriage is in line with the draft green-top guideline on recurrent miscarriage.
Nice has acknowledged the latest evidence from the Prism trial and how it can translate into tangible action for women experiencing recurrent miscarriage. We still have a way to go before we understand the best treatments for women experiencing unexplained pregnancy loss, and would welcome further research in this area.
