Complementary health education and clinical guidance for treating women experiencing infertility along with unexplained resistant hyperprolactinemia

Abstract

This study prospective randomized controlled trial aims to test the impact of adding health education, awareness of some contributing factors and clinical guidance to therapeutic cabergoline given to infertile women with unexplained resistant hyperprolactinemia. It comprised 120 infertile women with unexplained persistent hyperprolactinemia not responding to therapeutic doses of cabergoline 1.5-2 mg/week who were subjected to proper history taking to exclude concomitant drug intake or possible brain problems in all cases. They were classified into group A (60 cases) who received health education and clinical guidance to search for possible contributing factors and were instructed to avoid them in addition to proper therapeutic doses of cabergoline, while group B (60 cases) received proper therapeutic doses of cabergoline only without clinical guidance. After 1 month, serum prolactin (PRL) was measured for all cases. All cases had high PRL level at the start of the study (79.9±28.4 [39-195] and 78.2±19.9 [42-189] in group A and B, respectively) without any significant difference. Pretreatment counselling revealed that lifestyle factors, sexual behaviors or feeding habits may contribute to resistant hyperprolactinemia in all cases without a significant difference between both groups. Serum PRL dropped significantly more in group A (20.14±10.31 [11-45] vs. 49.32±37.03 [12-100]) after combined health education, clinical guidance of the couple and proper treatment. It is concluded that lifestyle factors, sexual behaviors, and feeding habits would affect the response of hyperprolactinemia to treatment. Health education and clinical guidance with some advice to avoid them, would concomitantly improve the response of resistant hyperprolactinemia to therapeutic doses of dopamine agonists.

Keywords

• prolactin
• hyperprolactinemia
• infertility
• health
• cabergoline