Featured series 
Tag: pregnancy and childbirth
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Health
Excess maternal weight gain increases birth weight, study finds
Expectant mothers who gain large amounts of weight tend to give birth to heavier infants who are at higher risk for obesity later in life. But it’s never been proven that this tendency results from the weight gain itself, rather than genetic or other factors that mother and baby share.
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Health
Study finds decline in birthweight of full-term infants
Thirteen-pound babies may make headlines, but they aren’t the norm. In fact, U.S. infants are getting smaller, according to Harvard researchers at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute’s Department of Population Medicine, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School (HMS). Their findings, published in the February issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, suggest that birth weights in…
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Health
Jeremiah Mead, architect of respiratory mechanics field, dies
Jeremiah “Jere” Mead, architect of the field of respiratory mechanics and professor emeritus in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), passed away on July 4, 2009, at a health care facility in Ellsworth, Maine. He was 88 years old. Working in the 1950s with then-research fellow Mary Ellen…
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Science & Tech
Countway marks development of ‘the pill’
The birth control pill, which revolutionized contraception and sparked a cultural reassessment of the purpose of sex and the sanctity of life, was developed by a Harvard fertility doctor who believed people should have children early in life — and as many as they could afford. John Rock, a Harvard College and Harvard Medical School…
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Health
Infant weight gain linked to childhood obesity
As childhood obesity continues its 30-year advance from occasional curiosity to cultural epidemic, health care providers are struggling to find out why — and the reasons are many. Increasingly sedentary environments for both adults and children, as well as cheap and ubiquitous processed foods no doubt play a role, but researchers are finding more evidence…
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Health
Low-income women with diabetes at increased risk for postpartum depression
Researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the University of Minnesota have found that living just above the poverty line and having diabetes increases by 50 percent a woman’s chance of developing postpartum depression — a serious illness that affects about one in 10 new mothers. “While previous studies have linked diabetes and depression in…
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Health
Antacid medication in pregnancy may increase childhood asthma
Children of mothers who took acid-suppressive drugs during pregnancy had a 1.5 times higher incidence of asthma when compared with children who were not exposed to the drugs in utero, finds a large population-based study by researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston. The findings, accompanied by an editorial, appear online in “Early View” in the journal…
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Science & Tech
Female lower back has evolved to accommodate strain of pregnancy
According to a new study by researchers at Harvard and the University of Texas at Austin, women’s lower spines evolved to be more flexible and supportive than men’s to increase comfort and mobility during pregnancy, and to accommodate the special biology of carrying a baby for nine months while standing on two feet. The study…
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Health
Weight gain between first and second pregnancies and sex ratio
A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, found that mothers who experienced an increase in weight from the beginning of the first pregnancy to the beginning of the second pregnancy may be slightly more likely to give birth to a baby boy during their second…
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Health
X inactivation seen as contact sport
At an early stage in a female embryo’s development, one of the two X chromosomes in each of its cells becomes inactivated. In two recent papers, the lab of Jeannie Lee makes important breakthroughs in uncovering how the two X chromosomes decide their fate. A study in the Jan. 20, 2006 Science shows that the…
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Health
Moms who breastfeed may be protected from type 2 diabetes
Researchers have demonstrated that breastfeeding a child for one year may reduce a woman’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 15 percent. This study appeared in the Nov. 23, 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. “We’ve known for a long time that breastfeeding is good for babies,” said lead author…
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Health
High blood glucose levels in early pregnancy may deprive embryo of oxygen
Research appearing in the October 2005 issue of the American Journal of Physiology: Endocrinology and Metabolism suggests that high blood glucose levels early in pregnancy deprive the embryo of oxygen, interfering with its development. “Until recently, it was not understood how diabetic pregnancy could cause birth defects. My laboratory wanted to explore this research because…
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Health
Poor prenatal nutrition permanently damages function of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas
To understand the increased risk factor, the researchers mated ordinary mice and separated the mothers into a control group that ate as much chow as they wanted throughout their pregnancies and another group that was fully nourished during the first two weeks but undernourished during the third week. At birth, the second group’s babies weighed…
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Health
Protein in urine may warn of preeclampsia risk in pregnant women
Preeclampsia, or toxemia, develops during pregnancy. In severe cases, it can rapidly escalate to eclampsia, a condition in which the mother suffers a series of potentially fatal complications. Ananth Karumanchi, MD, a nephrologist in the Department of Medicine at BIDMC and assistant professor of medicine, obstetrics and gynecology at Harvard Medical School, explains that while…
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Campus & Community
Appetite hormone restores fertility
A hormone called leptin has been trumpeted as an appetite suppressor and a possible treatment for obesity. New research shows that “a clear connection also exists between fat, or energy storage, and the ability to reproduce,” says Corrine Welt, an assistant professor of medicine who works at Massachusetts General Hospital, a Harvard affiliate. The women…
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Health
Pregnant women carrying boys eat more than those carrying girls
Researchers looked at the diets of 244 pregnant American women via a food frequency questionnaire during the second trimester. They found that women expecting a boy had an eight percent higher intake of protein, a nine percent higher intake of carbohydrates, an 11 percent higher intake of animal fats, and a 15 percent higher intake…
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Health
Hospital length of stay may not affect a newborn’s health
Researcher Jeanne M. Madden and colleagues used seven-and-a-half years of data on 20,366 mother-infant pairs with normal vaginal deliveries within a large Massachusetts health maintenance organization to determine the effects of reductions by the HMO in the postpartum length of stay and a subsequent state law establishing a minimum stay. The investigators measured the effects…
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Health
Formin gene may explain a common cause of female infertility
Harvard Medical School researchers Philip Leder and Benjamin Leader have discovered that oocytes from female mice without the formin gene Fmn2 cannot correctly position the metaphase I DNA-spindle. This produces daughter cells with an abnormal number of chromosomes, the leading cause of female infertility, birth defects, and embryo loss. Genes of the formin family, including…
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Science & Tech
Genetic sonograms may reduce need for amniocentesis
Radiologist Beryl Benacerraf is a Harvard Medical School clinical professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Benacerraf, a handful of like-minded maternal-fetal ultrasound specialists, and a growing number of older pregnant women believe in clarifying the risk of a genetic abnormality in a fetus by adding a detailed ultrasound known…
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Health
HIV-1 positive mothers taking vitamin A increase risk of transmitting HIV to newborns
In many regions of Africa, between 15 and 30 percent of women attending prenatal care clinics are HIV-1 positive. And 20 to 45 percent of children born to HIV-1 positive mothers become infected through breastfeeding or during intrauterine or labor and delivery periods. Mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1 has been attributed in part to poor maternal…
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Science & Tech
Pregnancy and delivery deadly for many Afghan women
Lynn Amowitz, a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital an a medical instructor at Harvard Medical School, found that women in the Herat province of Afghanistan receive some of the most inferior maternal healthcare in the world. Many clinics in the province lacked the basic medical supplies necessary for healthy delivery, such as forceps and…
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Health
Statistical work helps calm worries about anti-AIDS drugs and pregnancy
For years, physicians have prescribed antiretroviral therapies for HIV-positive, pregnant women to reduce the risk of babies being born with the AIDS virus. About 6,000 HIV-infected women give birth each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Concerns about the effects of anti-AIDS drugs and premature births were raised by…
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Health
Death protein may cause neural tube defects in babies of diabetic mothers
A research report provides a possible explanation for a class of birth defects that appears to be on the rise. A protein normally involved in programmed cell death may, as a consequence of high blood sugar, mistakenly tell cells of the nascent neural tube to die. Even with good control of diabetes, the risk for…
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Health
Trying to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV
Harvard AIDS Institute researchers in Botswana are trying to help HIV-infected mothers and their infants. In the rural area of Molepolole, where AIDS Institute researcher Shahin Lockman lives and works, about two thirds of pregnant women consent to HIV testing. Lockman says that a little more than half of HIV-infected women choose to participate in…
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Health
Sorting good eggs from bad ones
An oocyte is an immature egg cell in the ovaries. Before a woman is born, her ovaries will contain about five million eggs. At birth, about three million of those egg cells die — apparently by committing suicide. This fact of nature has long puzzled scientists. Now, Harvard researchers working at the Center for Blood…
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Health
Amniotic cells may be source of new tissue
Babies born with congenital defects often require surgery. Surgeons face a problem, however — in adults, tissue for repair is borrowed from other areas of the body, but babies don’t have enough tissue to spare. Sometimes surgeons use teflon — certainly not an ideal replacement. The laboratory of Dario Fauza, Harvard Medical School instructor in…
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Science & Tech
Dating violence linked with teen pregnancy, suicide attempts
About one in five girls experience physical or sexual dating violence, according to a new study by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, the Boston University School of Public Health and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. These girls are significantly more likely to engage in other behaviors that pose serious health risks.…