Fertility & Pregnancy News

A major new review published today by the scientific journal Addiction reveals that in studies testing the effectiveness of stop-smoking support for pregnant women, nearly half (43%) of the women who managed to stay off cigarettes during the pregnancy went back to smoking within 6 months of the birth. While not smoking during pregnancy is very important, there is an urgent … [Read more...]

When women in labor are given more time to deliver their baby than current guidelines recommend, their incidence of cesarean delivery drops by 55 percent, say researchers at Thomas Jefferson University. Their study, in the March issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, is the first to formally test what happens when women in the second stage of labor … [Read more...]

Obese pregnant women who adhere to an intensive nutritional and exercise program starting in the first trimester gain less weight in pregnancy and have fewer pregnancy complications compared with peers who receive standard prenatal care, a new study from China finds. The results were presented at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine … [Read more...]

Researchers at the University of Michigan have identified a potential new approach to fertility preservation for young cancer patients that addresses concerns about beginning cancer treatment immediately and the possibility of reintroducing cancer cells during the fertility preservation process. The work, done in mice, has potential to expand options for girls and women … [Read more...]

There are indications that unborn children who are exposed to severe stress levels, have an increased risk of becoming overweight or developing obesity as adults. This is shown by a new registry study from Aarhus University. The researchers have previously shown that severe stress experienced by pregnant women can lead to weight problems for children between 10 and 13 years; … [Read more...]

Doctors are seeing a rise in the number of parents requesting so-called 'vaginal seeding' for babies born by caesarean section, according to an editorial in the BMJ. The practice, which is also known as microbirthing, involves taking a swab from the mother's vagina and wiping this over the baby's mouth, eyes, face and skin shortly after birth by caesarean section. The … [Read more...]

Vaginal delivery is associated with approximately twofold increase in the risk of stress urinary incontinence compared to caesarean section. However, avoiding one case of at least moderate stress incontinence would require about a dozen caesarean sections, according to an extensive meta-analysis conducted by the Clinical Urology and Epidemiology (CLUE) Working Group. Stress … [Read more...]

Women who are deficient in vitamin D in the first 26 weeks of their pregnancy may be at risk of developing severe preeclampsia, a potentially life-threatening disorder diagnosed by an increase in blood pressure and protein in the urine, according to research by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. In one of the largest studies to date, researchers … [Read more...]

Children are likely to have stronger muscles if their mothers had a higher level of vitamin D in their body during pregnancy, according to new research from the Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit (MRC LEU) at the University of Southampton. Low vitamin D status has been linked to reduced muscle strength in adults and children, but little is known about how … [Read more...]

In nature, animals face a broad range of temperatures, and at times the heat can become taxing. When it becomes too hot to survive, some animals can simply migrate to more favorable climates, but what if you are a mere embryo confined within an egg and cannot escape the heat? High temperatures can cause proteins within the embryo to become denatured -- an unraveling that … [Read more...]

Obese mothers are more likely to have children with metabolic disorders such as diabetes compared with thin mothers, but the underlying molecular and cellular reasons for this effect have been unclear. A study published by Cell Press on January 23rd in the journal Cell reveals that the offspring of mouse mothers on a high-fat diet are predisposed to obesity and diabetes because … [Read more...]

Researchers at UPM and UWO have shown that performing supervised moderate-intensity exercise during pregnancy can prevent gestational hypertension in pregnant women and overweight in newborns. A team of researchers from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and University of Western Ontario (Canada) has carried out a randomized clinical trial with healthy pregnant women in three … [Read more...]

Bacteria that live in the gut interact with dietary components to affect health and wellness. In a study published February 18 in Cell, a team led by Jeffrey Gordon at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis now finds key components in breast milk that promote healthy infant growth and how interactions with the gut bacteria drive this process. Childhood … [Read more...]

Tobacco smoking by pregnant women has long been viewed as a public health risk because of smoking's adverse effects on the development of a fetus. Smoking during pregnancy is linked to numerous negative outcomes, including low birth weight, sudden infant death syndrome, and increased risk for attention deficit disorder, conduct disorder, and nicotine use in offspring. … [Read more...]

For most women, expecting a baby brings intense joy --and a fair amount of worry. But what about women who have lived through something awful enough to cause post-traumatic stress disorder? Contrary to what researchers expected, a new study shows that pregnancy may actually reduce their PTSD symptoms. Or at the least, it won't cause a flare-up. The news isn't all good, … [Read more...]

A new study finds that the epilepsy drug levetiracetam appears not to be associated with thinking, movement and language problems for preschool children born to mothers who took the drug during pregnancy, although the drug valproate was associated with some difficulties in preschoolers. The study is published in the January 8, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical … [Read more...]

Children born to obese women with diabetes are more than four times as likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder than children of healthy weight mothers without diabetes, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests. The findings, to be published Jan. 29 in the journal Pediatrics, highlight what has become a leading theory about autism, … [Read more...]

Calcium and vitamin D supplements after menopause can improve women's cholesterol profiles. And much of that effect is tied to raising vitamin D levels, finds a new study from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) just published online in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). Whether calcium or vitamin D can indeed improve cholesterol levels … [Read more...]

Women who are deficient in vitamin D in the first 26 weeks of their pregnancy may be at risk of developing severe preeclampsia, a potentially life-threatening disorder diagnosed by an increase in blood pressure and protein in the urine, according to research by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. In one of the largest studies to date, researchers … [Read more...]

Here's more evidence that pregnant women should be careful about what they eat and drink: A new research report appearing in the June 2014 issue of The FASEB Journal shows that when taken during pregnancy, resveratrol supplements led to developmental abnormalities in the fetal pancreas. This study has direct relevance to human health--Resveratrol is widely used for its … [Read more...]

Women who take antidepressants during pregnancy do not appear to be at greater risk of giving birth to children with congenital heart defects compared to women who are not exposed to the drugs, according to new research from UCL. The study, which analysed data from over 200,000 pairs of women and children in the UK between 1990 and 2011, showed that other characteristics, … [Read more...]

The benefit that premature infants gain from skin-to-skin contact with their mothers is measurable even 10 years after birth, reports a new study in Biological Psychiatry. Physical contact with babies is essential for their physical and psychological development. This lesson has been learned the hard way, as infants neglected in hospitals and orphanages developed many … [Read more...]

"It is OK to drink a little bit of alcohol during pregnancy" or "a pregnant woman should not touch alcohol at all during her pregnancy." These statements represent the contradictory conclusions that large population studies on pregnancy and alcohol can reach. Psychologist Janni Niclasen has just defended her PhD thesis on the subject at the University of Copenhagen. She was … [Read more...]

Expectant women with prenatally diagnosed fear of childbirth are at an increased risk of postpartum depression, according to a study of over 500,000 mothers in Finland. Women with a history of depression are at the highest risk of postpartum depression. The fact that fear of childbirth puts women without a history of depression at an approximately three times higher risk of … [Read more...]

Led by Cornell University nutritional scientist Rebecca Seguin, a new study of 93,000 postmenopausal American women found those with the highest amounts of sedentary time -- defined as sitting and resting, excluding sleeping -- died earlier than their most active peers. The association remained even when controlling for physical mobility and function, chronic disease status, … [Read more...]

A University of Adelaide study has shown that the risk of serious complications such as stillbirth, preterm birth, low birth weight and neonatal death is around twice as high for babies conceived by assisted reproductive therapies compared with naturally conceived babies. In the most comprehensive study of its kind in the world, researchers from the University's Robinson … [Read more...]

A comparison of Y chromosomes in eight African and eight European men dispels the common notion that the Y's genes are mostly unimportant and that the chromosome is destined to dwindle and disappear. "The Y chromosome has lost 90 percent of the genes it once shared with the X chromosome, and some scientists have speculated that the Y chromosome will disappear in less than 5 … [Read more...]