Month: June 2012

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I’m in my 40s and I want off the Pill. How likely am I to get pregnant?

brigitte
The question

At what age is it reasonable for a woman to think that she’s no longer at risk of becoming pregnant? I’m in my mid-40s and am thinking it’s about time to stop using my birth control pills. Is it safe now or should I wait?

The answer

In general, your child-bearing years usually end approximately 10 years before the onset of menopause. This is the time in a woman’s life when hormonal changes cause her periods to stop and the body is no longer able to get pregnant. The age of menopause varies from woman to woman, but the average age in Canada is 51, according to the society of obstetricians and gynecologists of Canada .

It is only reasonable for a woman to think she is no longer at any risk of becoming pregnant when she reaches menopause. While the risk of pregnancy decreases significantly after 40 (when cycles become irregular and ovulation is unpredictable), there is still a chance of getting pregnant until menopause is reached.

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Early Menopause May Raise Risk for Brain Aneurysm

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(HealthDay News) — Early menopause may be associated with an increased risk of brain aneurysm, new research suggests.

The study by researchers from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago included 76 postmenopausal women who had a brain aneurysm, or an abnormal bulging of an artery in the brain. Aneurysms are serious. If the bulge leaks or ruptures, it can lead to stroke or death.

About 26 percent of the women who had an aneurysm experienced menopause by age 40, compared with about 19 percent in a comparison group of women who didn’t have an aneurysm.

Every four-year increase in the age at which a woman went through menopause was associated with a 21 percent decreased risk of aneurysm.

The study was published online June 11 in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery.

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Healthcare and reproductive rights divide U.S. and Canada

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NEW YORK, June 13 (TrustLaw) – On one side of the border, a woman can see a doctor for free and is guaranteed paid maternity leave. On the other, most women do not qualify for free healthcare and one in five under 65 does not have medical insurance.

These differences and others make Canada the best country among the world’s wealthiest nations to be a woman and keep the United States out of the top five, according to a poll of experts released on Wednesday by TrustLaw, a legal news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The United States ranked sixth among the 19 countries in the Group of 20 economies, excluding the European Union economic grouping, in the global survey of 370 recognised gender specialists.

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Should MPs sanction ‘three-parent babies’?

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There are about 50 known mitochondrial diseases, which are passed on in genes coded by mitochondrial (as opposed to nuclear) DNA. They range in severity, but for most there is no cure. It is therefore understandable that scientists and affected families want research into “three-parent embryo” techniques to go ahead. But there are good reasons for caution.

To begin with, this is not about finding a cure. It is about preventing people with mitrochondrial disease being born. These new technologies, even if they work, will do nothing for the thousands of people already suffering from these diseases, or for those who will be born with it in the future. And for affected couples there are already alternative solutions, including adoption and egg donation. Apart from this, I’m left with some big questions.

Will it work? This technology uses similar “nuclear transfer” techniques to those used in “therapeutic cloning” for embryonic stem cells – which has thus far failed to deliver, and animal-human cytoplasmic hybrids (“cybrids”). The wild claims made about cybrids by the biotechnology industry, research scientists, patient-interest groups and science journalists duped parliament into licensing animal-human hybrid research in 2008. Few today will remember Gordon Brown’s empty promises of cybrids offering “a profound opportunity to save and transform millions of lives” or how this research would be “an inherently moral endeavour that can save and improve the lives of thousands and over time millions of people”. But the measure was supported in a heavily whipped vote as part of the human fertilisation and embryology bill, now the HFE Act. Yet cybrids are now a farcical footnote in history. They have not worked. Ironically, it was in that same act of parliament that provision for this new research was also made

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Menopausal women with high oestradiol levels at greater risk of strokes

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Women are less prone to cardiovascular disease then men; but this difference between the sexes becomes less marked after the menopause. This observation is behind a great deal of received wisdom, where oestrogen is assumed to have a beneficial effect on the heart and blood vessels. Today, new data seems to question these presuppositions. A study has been conducted by a team of Inserm researchers, directed by Pierre-Yves Scarabin (Inserm Unit 1018 “Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health Research”), on 6,000 women aged over 65; its results demonstrate, for the first time, that women with high levels of oestradiol in their blood are exposed to a greater risk of myocardial infarction or strokes.

The results are published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Oestrogen hormones play a key role in sexual development and reproduction in women. Oestradiol is the most active hormone. Its blood levels are particularly high during the active reproductive period. After the menopause, the ovarian function ceases, leading to a significant drop in oestrogen levels in the blood (the adipose tissue then becomes the main source of oestrogen). However, low concentrations of these hormones do continue to circulate and may still exert biological actions.

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Prenatal genetic test offers more information, raises questions

brigitte

The latest advance in prenatal genetic testing purports to offer parents more detailed information than ever about the child they are expecting. But for some, the new answers could lead to another round of questions.

The technology allows doctors to detect small or subtle chromosomal changes in a fetus — such as missing or extra pieces of DNA — that could be missed by standard tests.

Most parents will get results confirming a normal pregnancy. But some will learn that their baby has a birth defect, a developmental problem or other medical condition, and in a small number of cases the test will detect things that no one knows quite how to interpret.

The information can allow parents to prepare for early intervention and treatment, but it also could raise questions about terminating the pregnancy or lead to nagging worry over uncertain results.

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Menopausal Age May Affect Rheumatoid Arthritis Severity

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Women who experience early menopause have a reduced risk of developing a severe form of rheumatoid arthritis, a new study suggests.

Researchers looked at 134 women with rheumatoid arthritis and found that those who had early menopause (before age 45) were only half as likely to develop severe arthritis as those who had normal/late menopause (16 percent versus 35 percent), and were more likely to develop mild/moderate arthritis (58 percent versus 20 percent).

The use of birth control pills or a history of breast-feeding were not associated with major differences in severity of rheumatoid arthritis, the study authors noted.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic autoimmune disease that’s more common in women than in men. The disorder attacks joint tissues and sometimes organs, causing swelling, inflammation, fever and fatigue. It usually develops between the ages of 30 and 60 but can occur at other ages, according to the Arthritis Foundation.

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All the King’s Men: How to Put a Vas Deferens Back Together Again

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Of the 500,000 people every year who get vasectomies, about 5 to 10 percent change their minds after the fact. The procedure, which sterilizes men by severing the tube supplying sperm to the urethra, was once considered a permanent operation. And in fact, doctors still generally discourage undoing a vasectomy. But, as MSNBC reports, technological advances and expanding coverage for vasectomy reversals among health insurance companies are leading to a rise in “unsnipping”:

“Insurance companies are beginning to cover vasectomy reversals because the success rate of reversals is as good — if not better — than in vitro fertilizations (for women), in terms of live pregnancies,” said Dr. Natan Bar-Chama, a male infertility specialist and urologist at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York.

With the renewed interest in the tongue twistingly-named vasovasostomy, it’s worth exploring just how these things work. Despite the common belief that you cannot splice once you’ve sliced, there are actually two ways patients can have their vas deferens restored to their former, intact state.

The first method is relatively simple….

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Egg freezing technique could be ‘game changer’ for would-be parents

brigitte

Commerce Township — Soon after Julie and Bill VanDerworp got married in 1993, they started trying to have a baby. Although she was 27 and he was 30, the young couple was unable to conceive a child.

Eventually they tried fertility drugs and procedures. Still, no baby.

As the years passed, they tried conceiving with an egg donor. But it wasn’t until they turned to a donor whose eggs had been frozen with new technology that she finally got pregnant. Late last year, after spending nearly $200,000 and trying for more than a decade, the VanDerworps gave birth to a son they named Kent.

“It’s been such a long journey, such a long road,” Julie VanDerworp said. “But I still can’t believe my luck. (Having Kent) is everything I thought it would be. It’s so rewarding.”

The VanDerworps got the frozen egg from a donor in Michigan’s first “egg bank” — made possible by a reproductive technology that allows women to freeze their eggs so they can bear children later in life or after a cancer treatment, which typically leaves women infertile. The egg bank also can be used by women who are either infertile, like VanDerworp, or struggle with genetic issues they don’t want their children to inherit by using an egg that’s been donated by another woman.

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