Tuesday, May 22, 2007
As you may notice...
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
What Impact Does Smoking Have on the Unborn?
By Megan Rauscher 20 minutes ago
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study using laboratory rats provides strong evidence that smoking during pregnancy can have lasting harmful effects on the developing heart.
Scientists from the Center for Perinatal Biology, Loma Linda University, California found that adult offspring of laboratory rats who were exposed to nicotine prenatally showed clear signs of heart dysfunction.
"Our study shows that prenatal...nicotine has significant impact on cardiac function of adult offspring," Dr. Lubo Zhang told Reuters Health.
"The finding supports a very exciting area of research called 'fetal programming of cardiovascular disease.' This occurs not only with nicotine but with many other insults that may occur during fetal development," Zhang said.
In the study, the Loma Linda team treated rats with nicotine while they were pregnant and up to 10 days after delivery. The researchers then assessed the cardiac function of 3-month old male and female offspring.
Zhang's group observed that prenatal nicotine treatment significantly decreased coronary blood flow in adult female offspring.
In both male and female offspring, prenatal nicotine exposure significantly increased the susceptibility of the heart to injury. Again, the effect of nicotine was more pronounced in females than in males. "At the moment, we don't know why there is this gender dichotomy with females being more susceptible than males," Zhang said.
An estimated 11 percent of American women smoke during pregnancy. The harmful effects of nicotine exposure to their fetuses and newborns are significant. For example, a 2004 report found that women who smoked during pregnancy had children who were much higher risk for sudden infant death syndrome. The new study shows that smoking during pregnancy can lead to heart and vascular dysfunction beyond the formative years and into adulthood.
Zhang presented his research at the American Physiological Society's 120th annual meeting, part of Experimental Biology 2007, which is underway in Washington DC.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Something else already...
1 hour, 30 minutes ago
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 31 (HealthDay News) -- Muscle damage caused during vaginal childbirth is associated with a serious gynecological condition called pelvic organ prolapse later in life, U.S. researchers report.
Pelvic organ prolapse -- a fallen bladder, uterus, vagina or lower bowel -- causes more than 200,000 American women each year to undergo corrective surgery.
Researchers at the University of Michigan Health System also found that particularly high rates of pelvic organ prolapse were associated with the use of forceps during vaginal delivery.
The findings are published in the February issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
In their study, the Michigan team compared 151 women with prolapse to 135 women without the condition.
They found that 55 percent of the women with prolapse had major defects in a muscle called the levator ani (which supports the bladder and uterus), compared with 16 percent of the women who didn't have prolapse.
"Our findings are an important step forward in the search to identify what causes pelvic organ prolapse and subsequent difficulties with other problems, such as incontinence," study lead author Dr. John O.L. DeLancey, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the U-M Medical School and director of pelvic floor research, said in a prepared statement.
"The next step is for researchers to look at ways of preventing and treating these injuries of the levator ani muscle in order to reduce the rate of pelvic organ prolapse later in life," he said.
More information
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has more about pelvic support problems.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
How it won't be done...
Study finds baby brain bleeding in vaginal births
By Will Dunham Tue Jan 30, 1:43 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About a quarter of babies born in vaginal deliveries had a small amount of bleeding in their brains, while none delivered by Caesarean section did, according to a study published on Tuesday.
They said the findings suggest brain bleeding in some newborns has been commonplace in vaginal deliveries throughout history, but is being detected now only because of highly sophisticated imaging technology.
"There's no evidence that these bleeds are associated with problems in later life in either mental or physical function or ability," said Dr. Honor Wolfe, an obstetrician involved in the study published in the journal Radiology.
Pressure on the baby's skull while squeezing through the birth canal probably causes the bleeding, said Dr. John Gilmore, a psychiatry professor involved in the study.
The study involved a relatively small number of babies.
The researchers used high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging on 88 newborns, with equal numbers of boys and girls, an average of two weeks after birth. Of them, 65 were delivered vaginally and 23 by C-section, in which the baby is surgically delivered through the mother's abdomen.
Seventeen babies delivered vaginally -- 26 percent -- had bleeding in and around the brain, called intracranial hemorrhages. Most was located in the lower, rear part of the brain. Not one C-section baby had bleeding.
"While the vast majority of these are probably normal and go away and don't cause any problems, some of them were bigger and, we don't know, but may cause problems down the line as well," Gilmore said.
Small bleeds usually heal harmlessly, but larger ones could lead later in life to learning or motor development problems or seizures.
Gilmore said the researchers will see the children again at ages 1 and 2 to see if they have any enduring problems.
Wolfe said no studies have found C-sections offer long-term advantages to children, adding they are less safe for the mother than vaginal deliveries.
C-sections are favored when doctors think vaginal delivery could cause medical complications, but have become increasingly common for what would be considered normal births. Thirty percent of U.S. births in 2005 were by C-section.
The researchers said the bleeding was unrelated to the baby's size or head circumference, the length of labor or the use of forceps or vacuum during delivery.
Bones in a newborn's skull are not yet fused, allowing them to shift and overlap as the baby exits the birth canal -- a process that can compress the brain or tear blood vessels, causing bleeding, Gilmore said.
Most were small amounts of bleeding between the brain and the membrane that covers it inside the skull, called subdural hematomas.
A previous British study found 10 percent of babies in vaginal deliveries had brain bleeding. The sharpness of the imaging in the new study may account for the higher rate, said Dr. Keith Smith, a radiologist in the study.
