Stuttgart, Germany - When a woman is unable to have a baby, a thyroid gland disorder may be to blame, noted Roland Gaertner, a medical doctor and professor at Munich University.

Writing in the Stuttgart-based Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, he advised women with a fertility problem to have their thyroid gland examined.

The foetus depends on the mother's thyroid hormones, especially in the first weeks of pregnancy, Gaertner said. If the amount of hormones is insufficient, a miscarriage could result. Gaertner said that many women who had experience such miscarriages did not even notice they were pregnant.

Women with a condition called autoimmune thyroiditis are especially at risk of miscarriage. According to Gaertner, one in six women has a predisposition to the disorder, in which an inflammation of the thyroid gland causes the immune system to produce antibodies that attack and destroy thyroid cells.

The result is a deficiency of the thyroid hormones necessary for the normal development of the foetus. Gaertner said that women suffering from this disorder could carry a baby to term if treated with thyroid hormones, however.