Fertility & Pregnancy News

With plummeting hormone levels, natural menopause before age 40 can put a damper on women's mental well being and quality of life. But bringing testosterone back up to normal may not bring them the boost some hoped for, found a new study published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). Before age 40, ovaries stop functioning in … [Read more...]

Active and passive smoking are linked to infertility problems and a hastening of the natural menopause before the age of 50, finds a large study published online in the journal Tobacco Control. The highest levels of tobacco exposure were associated with the arrival of menopause 1 to 2 years earlier in active and passive smokers than among lifetime non-smokers who had not … [Read more...]

A new study finds some surprising ways in which women's health at midlife is connected to when they had their first child and to their marital history. Researchers found that women who had their first child in their early 20s didn't report better health at midlife than those who had their first baby as a teen. "We've had all this focus on the bad effects of teen … [Read more...]

Turning the TV off during mealtimes to help prevent childhood obesity may need to start even before a child is born, according to a study to be presented Tuesday, May 6, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Researchers found that pregnant women who watched television while eating were more likely to sit in front of … [Read more...]

Mothers who smoke are putting more than their own health at risk, suggests a study published today in BJOG: an International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (BJOG). Young men whose mothers smoked during pregnancy had lower aerobic fitness compared to those whose mothers did not. For the first time, a small Finnish study has examined the impact of maternal smoking on … [Read more...]

Approximately three of every four Cincinnati infants heavily breastfeed after the age of six months is not obtaining the level of dietary diversity recommended by the World Health Organization, according to a new Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center study. The study raises the question of whether better education is needed about the importance of introducing at … [Read more...]

Use of the antifungal medication fluconazole for six weeks for extremely low birth-weight infants did not significantly reduce the risk of death or invasive candidiasis, a serious infection that occurs when candida (a type of fungus) enters the bloodstream and spreads through the body, according to a study in the May 7 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on child health. This issue is … [Read more...]

In the first study of its kind, researchers have shown that inadequate maternal iron intake during pregnancy exerts subtle effects on infant brain development. Their findings have been published online by the journal Pediatric Research. The research--led by principal investigators Bradley S. Peterson, MD, director of the Institute for the Developing Mind at The Saban … [Read more...]

Treatment with progesterone, a naturally occurring hormone that has been shown to alleviate severe hot flashes and night sweats in post-menopausal women, poses little or no cardiovascular risk, according to a new study by the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health. The findings, published today in PLOS ONE, help to dispel a major impediment to widespread … [Read more...]

A mother's diet before conception can permanently affect how her child's genes function, according to a study published in Nature Communications. The first such evidence of the effect in humans opens up the possibility that a mother's diet before pregnancy could permanently affect many aspects of her children's lifelong health. Researchers from the MRC International … [Read more...]

Mothers of healthy weight during their first pregnancy who gain even a moderate amount of weight (around 6 kg in a woman of average height) between their first and second pregnancies increase the risk of their baby dying in its first year of life, according to new research involving over 450000 Swedish women, published in The Lancet. The findings also reveal an incremental … [Read more...]

New Michigan State University research aims to help doctors estimate the size of newborns with a new set of birth weight measurements based on birth records from across the country. "More than 7 million records were reviewed," said Nicole Talge, an assistant professor in MSU's Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, who co-led the study which is now available in the … [Read more...]

When several factors are accounted for, stillbirth may be associated with both severely restricted and excessive fetal growth, according to a study by US researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. Radek Bukowski and colleagues from the NICHD Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network investigated the fetal growth abnormalities associated with stillbirth using a new … [Read more...]

When it comes to effective solutions for lowering cholesterol levels in pregnant women, Mother Nature may know best. Researchers at the University at Buffalo are studying whether plant sterols can be used as a natural alternative to drug therapy in expectant mothers who have high cholesterol. While it's normal for a woman's cholesterol to spike during pregnancy, excessive … [Read more...]

A new study suggests that fish consumption advisories for expecting mothers are ineffective in reducing infant exposure to long-lived contaminants like persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The study, performed by a team of researchers including University of Toronto Scarborough PhD student Matt Binnington and Professor Frank Wania, looks at how different levels of … [Read more...]

Certain prenatal risk factors are associated with the development of chronic kidney disease in children, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). Future studies should investigate whether modifying these factors could help protect children's kidney health. Risks for certain types of kidney disease may … [Read more...]

A long-term study evaluating maternal diet's impact on food allergy in later life is expected to uncover causes of allergy in children. About 20 million Europeans are subject to food allergies. Now scientists are looking at these allergies in new ways. It involves the food industry in its work and pays special attention to the link between early diets and allergy in later … [Read more...]

Pregnant women with chronic hypertension (high blood pressure) are highly likely to suffer from adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm delivery, low birth weight and neonatal death, which highlights a need for heightened surveillance, suggests a paper published on bmj.com today. Chronic hypertension complicates between 1-5% of pregnancies, and the problem may be … [Read more...]

Children exposed to marijuana in the womb show a significant improvement in their ability to track moving objects at age four, according to new vision research. But researchers are warning that the results do not mean marijuana has a benefical effect on foetal development. The study from the University of Waterloo, University of Aukland and Brown University appears in the … [Read more...]

Gaining both too much or too little weight during pregnancy appears to increase the risk of having an overweight or obese child, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published today in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. In one of the largest studies to examine current Institute of Medicine recommendations regarding pregnancy weight gain in relation to … [Read more...]

The simple act of running may be sufficient to prevent long-term cognitive impairments caused by prenatal exposure to antiepileptic drugs, according to a study published November 19th in Stem Cell Reports, the journal of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. The findings revealed that prenatal exposure to a commonly used antiepileptic drug called valproic acid (VPA) … [Read more...]

Don't believe the hype when you see those creams and ointments promising to prevent or reduce pregnancy stretch marks. Dermatologists are still learning about what causes stretch marks in the first place, and skin stretching is not the only risk factor. "Most of the existing products aren't based on solid scientific research," said Frank Wang, M.D., assistant professor and … [Read more...]

Lowering systolic blood pressure below the currently recommended target can reduce the risk of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), the most common complication of high blood pressure, according to new research. The study, led by Elsayed Z. Soliman, M.D., director of the Epidemiological Cardiology Research Center at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, is published in the … [Read more...]

The Effects of Aspirin in Gestation and Reproduction (EAGeR) medical trial has found that, in general, low-dose aspirin is not beneficial for future pregnancy outcomes in women with prior pregnancy loss. However, in women with one pregnancy loss within the previous 12 months, there did appear to be a benefit. Jean Wactawski-Wende, PhD, professor in the Department of … [Read more...]

A QUT study into how women choose sperm donors online has revealed men who are intellectual, shy, calm and methodical are selected to produce more children than those who are extroverted. The study, Determinants of online sperm donor success: how women choose by Stephen Whyte and Professor Benno Torgler from QUT's Queensland Behavioural Economics Group, has been published by … [Read more...]

A woman's genes may influence whether hormone therapy after menopause will provide her some protection against heart disease. Risk of cardiovascular disease in women increases after menopause and is associated with the drop in estrogen levels. Although replacing estrogen with menopausal hormone therapy could slow the progression of cardiovascular disease, the oral … [Read more...]