Archive for the ‘Pregnancy’ Category
Friday, March 12th, 2010
Alaska health officials have reported that the state's gonorrhea rates increased by 69% in 2009 after remaining steady for years, the Anchorage Daily News reports. Susan Jones of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services said the increase is the biggest one-year jump since the 1970s...
Friday, March 12th, 2010
Rhesus monkey babies born to mothers who had the flu while pregnant had smaller brains and showed other brain changes similar to those observed in human patients with schizophrenia, a study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in collaboration with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has found...
Friday, March 12th, 2010
An independent panel convened this week by the National Institutes of Health confronted a troubling fact that pregnant women currently have limited access to clinicians and facilities able and willing to offer a trial of labor after previous cesarean delivery because of so-called VBAC bans. Many, even those at low risk for complications in a trial of labor, are not offered this option...
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
During Cover the Uninsured Week, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reiterates its position that all women should be guaranteed a package of essential benefits that includes primary and preventive care, pregnancy-related and infant care, medically and surgically necessary services, prescription drugs, and catastrophic care...
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
The Los Angeles Times on Monday profiled Dave Wilkinson, an evangelical pastor who runs three Ventura County, Calif., pregnancy clinics that try to urge women not to have abortions...
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
A Princeton University-led research team has discovered that protein competition over an important enzyme provides a mechanism to integrate different signals that direct early embryonic development. The work suggests that these signals are combined long before they interact with the organism's DNA, as was previously believed, and also may inform new therapeutic strategies to fight cancer...
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) on Monday signed a bill (HB 462) that would allow prosecutors to bring criminal homicide charges against women who arrange illegal abortions, the Salt Lake Tribune reports (Gehrke, Salt Lake Tribune, 3/8). An earlier version of the bill (HB 12), sponsored by state Rep...
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
The New York Times on Tuesday examined efforts to increase rates of vaginal births after caesarean sections at the Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation, a small hospital run by the Navajo Nation and financed partially by the Indian Health Services...
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
By managing to express the protein that enables red blood cells infected with the malaria agent Plasmodium falciparum to bind to the placenta and by deciphering its molecular mechanisms, a team of researchers from CNRS and the Institut Pasteur has taken an important first step in the development of a vaccine against pregnancy-associated malaria. Their work was published in the journal PNAS...
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Women with metal-on-metal hip implants, where both the ball of the joint and the surface of the socket are made of metal, pass metal ions to their offspring during pregnancy, according to a study by researchers at Rush University Medical Center. The ions are the result of wear and corrosion as the metal parts rub against one another...
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Hip replacement patients with metal-on-metal (MoM) implants (both the socket and hip ball are metal) pass metal ions to their infants during pregnancy, according to a new study presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS)...
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have discovered that exposure during pregnancy to Bisphenol A (BPA), a common component of plastics, causes permanent abnormalities in the uterus of offspring, including alteration in their DNA. The findings were reported in the March issue of Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB J.). Led by Hugh S. Taylor, M.D...
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) is one of many serious disorders for which prenatal testing is available. SMA affects approximately 1 in 10,000 live births and is the leading genetic cause of infant mortality and the second most common autosomal recessive disorder, after cystic fibrosis...
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
Community support groups can reduce neonatal mortality, and lower rates of maternal depression-provided that the population coverage is wide enough and the programmes are appropriately designed. These are the conclusions of two Articles, published Online First in The Lancet. Participatory women's groups have shown promise in trials in Nepal, reducing neonatal mortality by about one-third...
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Pregnant women are skimping on fruit and vegetables and gaining too much weight, according to a new Australian study. The research, in the journal Nutrition & Dietetics published by Wiley-Blackwell, found that expectant mothers are eating less than half the recommended servings of fruit and vegetables. And at least one in three put on more than the recommended weight gain for pregnancy...
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Previous studies have explored the effect of periodontal treatment, irrespective of efficacy of treatment, in reducing infant prematurity. In a study titled "Risk of Preterm Birth Is Reduced with Successful Periodontal Treatment," lead researcher M. Jeffcott, and colleagues S. Parry and M. Sammel (all from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia) and G. Macones (Washington University, St...
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Utah Rep. Carl Wimmer (R) on Thursday withdrew for revisions a bill (HB 12) that would have allowed sentences of up to life in prison for any woman whose fetus dies because of her intentional or reckless actions, the New York Times reports (Johnson, New York Times, 3/4). The legislation -- which had been sent to Gov...
Monday, March 8th, 2010
A bill (SF 2645) in the Minnesota Legislature would require each school district to create an "abstinence-first" sex education curriculum with "age-appropriate" lessons on human sexuality and information about condoms and other contraceptives, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports...
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Reversing a 15-year trend, the percentage of infants born at home rose slightly in 2005 and remained stable in 2006, according to a report published Wednesday in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Vital Statistics Reports, USA Today reports. Marian MacDorman, a demographer at CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, said it is not clear what caused the slight increase...
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Two articles published Online First in The Lancet report that community support groups can reduce neonatal mortality. In addition, they can lower rates of maternal depression, provided that the population coverage is wide enough and the programs are suitably designed. In trials in Nepal, participatory women's groups have shown promise. Neonatal mortality was reduced by about one-third...
Monday, March 8th, 2010
The nation's champion for babies has received the 2010 Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian Award. Dr. Jennifer L. Howse, who has served as president of the March of Dimes since 1990, was honored March 2 by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NIFD) at a ceremony at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner, Va. "Dr...