A new study published online earlier this week by the British medical journal The Lancet suggests that the number of women dying during pregnancy or childbirth has dropped by more than one third in the past three decades, from half a million annual deaths in 1980 to 343,000 as of 2008. The study, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates
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After steadily growing from 2003 to 2006 and reaching an all-time high in 2007, the U.S. birth rate declined in 2008, coinciding with the economic downturn, according to a new analysis from the Pew Research Center. Utilizing 2008 birth and economic data available for 25 states, researchers noticed that in most states the birth rate
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Women who have taken the pill may live longer because they face less risk of heart disease and cancer, according to new study led by Dr. Philip Hannaford from Scotland’s University of Aberdeen. The study, published this week in the British Medical Journal, followed more than 46,000 female patients from 1,400 medical practices throughout
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Following a single ovarian transplant, a woman gave birth to two healthy children in two separate pregnancies—a first for the fertility technique that has been gaining ground among specialists, and may provide hope to women forced to confront potential infertility due to a battle with cancer. The case of Danish woman Stinne Holm
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It has been more than three decades since the very first “test tube baby” was born, and since that summer day in 1978, some three million babies have been brought into the world using assisted reproductive technology (ART). While the vast majority of those children are completely healthy, babies conceived using ART are generally at
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Women who give birth after age 40 face a higher risk of having an autistic child, regardless of the father’s age, according to a comprehensive study of all births in the state of California in the 1990s. Researchers from the University of California, Davis, found that a woman who gave birth after age 40 was 50% more likely to have an
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Though sperm are generally considered pretty wriggly little guys, before they are launched into action, so to speak, they aren’t racing around. While researchers have long known that what gets them swimming is a change in internal pH level—the more alkaline their pH, the more aggressively they swim—until now, the mechanism by which
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The (possibly apocryphal) advice given to Victorian women who weren’t fond of sex to “lie back and think of England,” may actually be useful to increase the odds of conception, at least following intra-uterine insemination (IUI).
A new study found that 27% of women who were advised to lie still for 15 minutes after insemination …
More good news on fertility: three new studies presented at a recent meeting of fertility doctors found that frozen eggs are as good as fresh– and that babies conceived via in-vitro fertilization (IVF) appear to be smarter than those conceived the old-fashioned way.
The research was presented at the latest meeting of the American …
Pregnant women with significant signs of depression may react more strongly to the seasonal flu vaccine than women with milder cases of the common mood disorder, according to a new study slated to appear in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. The study was small but carefully designed. Researchers had 22 pregnant women fill out …
Couples having difficulty conceiving may want to skip one item that is ordinarily considered helpful to the process—alcohol—at least if they are using in-vitro fertilization (IVF). A new study of 2,574 couples undergoing 5,363 IVF cycles between 1994 and 2003 found that couples in which both partners drank four or more alcoholic …
Republicans suffered a set back last November in more ways than one. A new study appearing today in the medical journal PLOS One shows that, in the hours after Obama was announced the 44th president of the United States, male, college-aged McCain fans experienced an immediate drop in testosterone. For the study, 183 people offered up …
Women lucky enough to live in 1 of the 8 states that mandates insurance coverage of in vitro fertilization (IVF) may be even more lucky than they realize. According to the latest research presented by Yale School of Medicine researchers at this week’s annual American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference, those mom-wannabes are …
