“Steroids may prevent up to a third of miscarriages by controlling 'killer cells',” was a headline that emerged this week from the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting.

Work from Liverpool University has shown that high levels of immune cells in the womb called natural killer cells are associated with recurrent miscarriage and that a type of steroid can reduce these levels. Of 40 women treated with the steroid, 30 went on to have healthy babies. A bigger trial is now planned,

Problem solved at last? Don't put out the flags. Pretty much the same headline has appeared regularly over the past four decades. Only the suggested remedy has changed. There was bed rest and injections of progesterone, then immunotherapy and later drugs that made a woman's blood less sticky.

All this work has come from top researchers. But with the exception of the last treatment, which is successful only in a small sub-group of women, all have been quietly dropped in the face of larger trials. A hormone called DES, used in the 1950s, worked but was later found to be the cause of unusual cancers in the daughters of women who had taken it.

The truth is that one-off miscarriage in the early months is normal and nine out of ten women will go on to have a successful pregnancy. It's also true that half of women who have had several miscarriages will be found to have no causative medical problem. When you want a baby, this can be a difficult truth to accept.

As I have discovered in interviews for Am I Normal for Radio 4, women who have miscarried actually want to be found abnormal. Such a diagnosis means that a treatment, a potential solution, may be available. If the tests find you to be normal, then the difficulty of having a successful pregnancy remains dauntingly real.

As women are having babies later in ther lives, one-off miscarriage becomes more common. Women seem to believe - and these headlines add to the belief - that one-off early miscarriages should be investigated and could be prevented by treatment or lifestyle change. The fact is that, while their emotional impact should be recognised, no treatment is needed.

As for multiple miscarriages, everything points to multiple causes with no single treatment likely to be successful. In health, there are rarely easy answers.

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