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Archive for May, 2010
Anticonvulsants and Bone Loss
May 18th
Anticonvulsants are not only used for the treatment of epilepsy but are now used with increasing frequency for the treatment of mood disorders, such as bipolar disorder. Recent studies have indicated that anticonvulsants may negatively affect bone mineral density, as well as increase fracture risk. This seems to be especially common with the older anticonvulsants [...]
This Week’s Celebrity Baby Bumps
May 12th
James Van Der Beek's girlfriend debuts her baby bump, Isla Fisher keeps it casual in jeans and a short-sleeve cardigan, she later wears a golden brown tunic as she shops with her first born, Claudia Schiffer wears a cream dress for the school run, and Amy Adams keeps cool in light colors and sandals.
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Ultrasound Reveals Breastfeeding Mechanics
May 12th
Although it might look like a baby is chewing on the mother's nipple, ultrasound images show that the infant actually removes milk by creating a vacuum - also known as sucking.
The finding is important, as it could explain why some babies fail to take to the breast. It may also shed new light on why - for a minority of women - breastfeeding really can be a painful experience.
"There have been two theories about how breast milk is expressed," says Donna Geddes of the University of Western Australia in Crawley.
"One is that the baby uses a peristaltic or compression motion to actually push the milk out of the nipple and breast. The other theory is that vacuum is primary in removing the milk."
Until now, most studies examining the mechanics of breastfeeding have focused on bottle-feeding infants, or on old X-rays that were of poor quality.
Instead, Geddes and her colleagues combined ultrasound imaging of infants suckling on the breast with measurements of the strength of the vacuum created by the baby's mouth in 20 infants aged 3 to 24 weeks as they breastfed.
"What we see is that when the tongue is lowered and the vacuum is applied, that's when the milk is coming out of the breast, and that doesn't involve any compression of the nipple," says Geddes. "It's not a milking action at all."
They also found that infants who struggled to breastfeed generated much weaker vacuums than successful breastfeeders. This may explain why babies with a cleft palate often fail to breastfeed, as do premature babies: preterm infants don't have strong enough mouth muscles to suck hard enough.
The next step is to devise a simple and universal test that could be used to assess babies' ability to suck. This could reassure mothers whose infants are struggling to feed that it's not their fault. "Currently there are no measurements to assure the mother or the clinician that things [in the breast] are working," says Geddes.
For such women, keeping the milk flowing using a breast pump and using this to top up breastfeeding until the baby is strong enough to suck effectively may be a better option than giving up on breastfeeding altogether.
The team also looked at women who found breastfeeding painful and discovered that their infants had a particularly vigorous action.
"They're strong suckers," says Geddes. Some were also distorting or crushing the nipple. Further study of these infants may aid the development of better nipple shields to reduce pain during breastfeeding.
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“Love” Hormone Released When Mom’s Voice is Heard
May 12th
The working mother who cannot be at home to cuddle a distraught child can relax - her voice on the phone soothes as much as a hug, a study suggests.
US researchers put more than 60 girls in a stressful situation and monitored their hormonal responses when they were either phoned or hugged afterwards.
Their mother's voice produced virtually the same amount of the stress-quelling hormone oxytocin as physical comfort.
The findings appear in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The girls, aged between seven and 12, were asked to make an impromptu speech and then solve a series of sums in front of a panel of strangers - experiences which sent their hearts racing and levels of the stress hormone cortisol soaring.
For one group of girls their mother was on hand immediately afterwards to offer physical comfort - a hug, or an arm around the shoulder. Another group was handed a phone with mother on the line, while a third watched March of the Penguins - seen as an emotionally-neutral film.
Oxytocin - a hormone believed to be strongly associated with social bonding, and one which alleviates the effects of cortisol - rose in both groups to similar levels. Oxytocin levels in the film group did not increase.
"It was understood that oxytocin release in the context of social bonding usually required physical contact," said Dr Leslie Seltzer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the research.
"But it's clear from these results that a mother's voice can have the same effect as a hug, even if they're not standing there."
Previous research suggesting physical contact was necessary to produce oxytocin in stressful circumstances was primarily carried out on rodents, therefore failing to take into account the very human impact of language, the researchers said.
Research has suggested that even in the womb a fetus - at least in the later stages of pregnancy - is capable of recognizing its mother's voice.
But whether this has any emotional impact at this young age is unclear.
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Study: Oral Bacteria can Lead to Stillbirth
May 12th
Scientists say they've identified a culprit behind stillbirths and miscarriages in seemingly healthy pregnant women. It turns out that oral bacteria -- even the kinds that exist normally -- can travel through an open wound in the mouth into the bloodstream, settle in the placenta and potentially end a pregnancy.
When bacteria migrate from their normal environment (where they usually don't cause harm) to a new one, problems can arise. The placenta doesn't have an immune system, and it can become inflamed when the oral bacteria set up shop. This can lead to premature births as well as deaths, researchers say.
Yiping Han of the Case Western Reserve School of Dental Medicine led the study. She said they expected the bad bacteria, like the kind that causes gingivitis, to be responsible for aborted or premature pregnancies.
"We found many bacteria did locate to the placenta, but they were not the most famous periodontal pathogens," said Han. "In fact, many of the bacteria were the kind that are found in healthy people's mouths. The normal healthy woman is under risk. People should be concerned about it."
This research comes on the heels of earlier studies linking gum health to heart disease. Han said more research needs to be done to find out exactly which kinds of bacteria are colonizing the placenta so more effective treatments and therapies can be designed for pregnant women.
In the meantime, the American Dental Association recommends several ways to protect the health of your mouth. Fewer cuts and wounds inside your mouth means the oral bacteria will have less of a chance to get into the bloodstream and affect a pregnancy.
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Lithium and Breastfeeding
May 12th
Bipolar disorder (types I and II) affect up to 5% of the population in the United States. As the onset of this condition typically occurs during or before the reproductive years, the management of bipolar disorder in women is often complicated by pregnancy. There are concerns regarding fetal exposure to medication, the impact of untreated [...]
New Oral Contraceptive Approved
May 12th
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a combination oral contraceptive (OC) tablet called Natazia (Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals). It is a bit different from other OC preparations in that it contains 4 progestin/estrogen dosing combinations during each 28-day cycle (instead of being monophasic or triphasic), and it contains estradiol valerate (instead of ethinyl [...]
Top 10 Baby Names of 2009
May 10th
Just what you've been looking for - the top 10 baby names of 2009! Check out which names were added this year and if your favorites from 2008 held on or were dropped off the list.
Need some fresh name ideas for your baby? Be sure to check out our Baby Naming Tips or our lists of Shakespearean Baby Names and Celebrity Baby Names. Or do a quick search of our interactive Baby Name Finder to find the perfect baby name!
Top Girls' Names of 2009:
- Isabella
- Emma
- Olivia...
Top Boys' Names of 2009:
- Jacob
- Ethan
- Michael...
Stress early in pregnancy increases risks to babies
May 10th
Stressful situations in early pregnancy can lead to the birth of babies who are underweight or born too early, new research from China shows. Timing of the stress, the researchers found, was the key.
"The findings are modest, but significant," the authors write in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
The risks of premature births increased two-fold in women who were exposed to severe life events during their first and second trimesters - weeks 1-12 and 13-24, respectively. Premature birth, the authors note, is the single largest contributing factor in infant deaths in the developing world.
Researchers from Anhui Medical University, led by Dr. Peng Zhu, followed 1,800 pregnant women receiving prenatal treatment in 2008 at one hospital. The participants were surveyed on financial conditions, emotional support, traumatic events and their relationships with their spouses. Were jobs or fortunes lost, were family members cheated, did the family move, did a family member die or suffer an illness, or was there fighting or divorce?
There were 96 (5.3 percent) premature births and 55 (3.1 percent) low birth-weight babies.
Earlier studies have found that future moms with stressful lives were at greater risk of delivering preterm or low birth-weight babies. This study - looking at a long list of potentially stressful events experienced during pregnancy only - concluded that the earlier in pregnancy the stress occurred, the greater the risk.
The Zhu team found that premature birth was more than twice as likely if severely stressful events occurred during the first and second trimesters, but not the third. Low birthweight was nearly three times more likely if stress happened during the first trimester, compared to if it happened during the second or third trimester.
While for the most part consistent with earlier research, the Chinese researchers caution that the reach of their findings could be limited.
For instance, they warn that faulty memories, the small number of women in some of the stress categories, and the possibility that the list of stress events was flawed could weaken the power of the results.
The Zhu team concluded that health planners seeking to reduce the incidence of pre-term and low-weight births must take maternal stress into account when designing intervention programs.
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Smoking moms tied to lasting kids’ sleep woes
May 10th
Mothers who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to have children with sleep problems from birth all the way through age 12, new research shows.
"The more cigarettes that mothers smoked during pregnancy, the more sleep problems the children had," Dr. Kristen Stone of Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, one of the study's authors, told Reuters Health.
What's more, while most of the women who smoked during pregnancy used at least one other drug, Stone and her team found that nicotine was the only substance associated with sleep problems.
Stone and colleagues from centers in Miami, Detroit, and Memphis are following nearly 1,400 children born in 1993, 1994 or 1995 to investigate the long-term effects of exposure to substances during pregnancy.
The current study included children for whom data was available up to age 12. Among the 808 study participants, 374 had been exposed to cocaine or opiates such as heroin before birth, while 434 had not.
Children's mothers or other caregivers reported on whether a child had difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep during three periods: one month to four years of age; five to eight years, and nine to 12 years. Being exposed to cocaine, opiates, marijuana, or alcohol in the womb had no effect on a child's risk of having sleep problems, but nicotine did, and problems were seen at each of the three time points.
The researchers do not report what percentage of children had sleeping problems, but used a common measure of such problems that assigns points for items such as talking in one's sleep, sleepwalking, and having trouble falling asleep.
The link remained even after the researchers took into account factors such as socioeconomic status, whether or not a child had been abused, and whether the mother or caregiver smoked after the child was born.
The findings shouldn't be seen as showing that prenatal use of alcohol and drugs aside from cigarettes isn't as harmful to a child's sleep as smoking in pregnancy, Stone noted. Cigarettes are different from other substances, she explained, in that a person who smokes will typically do so much more frequently than a drug abuser uses cocaine or opiates.
Further, she said, many of the mothers in the study were using multiple substances while they were pregnancy. "When those substances are inside of us at the same time, they basically become a whole new substance because of their interactions with each other," she added. All of this makes it difficult to tease out the effects of nicotine and other drugs, according to the researcher.
When a child does have sleep problems, Stone said, "early and careful attention" to these issues can go along way toward helping that child sleep better.
"Even an emphasis on basic behavioral sleep education could serve those children well," she added. "Doing that would then likely improve the daytime experience for those children as well."
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