Tag: pregnancy and childbirth
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Nation & World
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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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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,…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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,…
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Nation & World
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,…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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,…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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,…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Nation & World
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…