Month: July 2012

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Hormone Therapy Undergoes 10-Year Review

brigitte

A systematic review of nine randomized, placebo-controlled trials published to assess the effectiveness of menopausal hormone therapy in the prevention of chronic conditions revealed: estrogen plus progestin and estrogen alone decreased risk for fractures but increased risk for stroke, thromboembolic events, gallbladder disease, and urinary incontinence; estrogen plus progestin increased risk for breast cancer and probable dementia; and estrogen alone decreased risk for breast cancer.

At one time, menopausal hormone therapy was routinely used by postmenopausal women to prevent cardiovascular disease, dementia, osteoporosis and other chronic conditions. However, once initial results of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) trials emerged in 2002 indicating important adverse health effects of this treatment, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) issued recommendations against using hormone therapy to prevent chronic conditions for estrogen plus progestin in 2002, and for estrogen only in 2005.

Read full article.

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Woman Sues FDA for Right to Select Sperm Donor, Bypass Sperm Bank

brigitte

A California woman pursuing artificial insemination is suing the federal government for the right to choose how she’ll get the sperm.

The unusual case was filed Monday in U.S. District Court. On the heels of the Supreme Court decision upholding the federal health care overhaul, the plaintiff in this case is challenging another area of federal health care regulation.
At issue are Food and Drug Administration rules that set standards for sperm banks — like requiring tests for communicable diseases. But the woman in the California suit doesn’t want to go through a standard sperm bank or other clinic. The anonymous plaintiff instead, according to the suit, wants to use the sperm of someone she knows — at no cost — without going through all the federal regulatory rigmarole.

She and her lawyers call the FDA rules an unconstitutional violation of her rights — that is, her right to start a family with whomever she wants.

“When you are regulating private decisions between two individuals in a non-commercial context that have to do with something so intimate and personal as whether they want to have a child together, then the FDA regulations should not apply,” Amber Abbasi , attorney in the case, told FoxNews.com.

Abbasi’s group Cause of Action filed the suit on the California woman’s behalf.

Read full article.

 

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How to Find Reliable Menopause Information Online

brigitte

Seventy-two percent of women have not received any treatment for menopausal symptoms, according to recent study conducted by Lake Research Partners for the Endocrine Society.

Of those polled, 45 percent said they thought current available information was confusing and 41 percent weren’t sure what to trust.

There are over 10 million menopause websites, many with misinformation about menopause, treatment options, tests, and strategies.

How do we find reliable menopause information online so we can have a productive conversation with our health care providers?

Different types of information are provided by a variety of websites: unbiased sites from scientific organizations, commercial sites with medically reviewed content, hospital sites, online health news, blogs and communities.

Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

North Carolina Legislature Votes to Defund Planned Parenthood

ASRM News and Research

The Republican-controlled General Assembly of North Carolina voted to defund Planned Parenthood late Monday night. An estimated $200,000 will be stripped from the state’s two Planned Parenthood Affiliates after the General Assembly voted to override Governor Beverly Purdue’s veto of the annual budget.

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Women Who Fail to Bear Children Twice as Likely to be Hospitalized for Alcoholism

brigitte

ISTANBUL – Women who want to become mothers but fail to bear children are at more than twice the risk of being hospitalised for alcoholism as those who succeed, it appears.

Researchers also found the risk of ending up in hospital for other serious psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia was markedly higher in women unable to become pregnant due to infertility.

The academics behind the study, presented at the annual conference of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Istanbul, said their results were “only the tip off the iceberg” because many more would be affected, but not so badly as to need in-patient treatment.

British fertility specialists argued the results were “shocking” evidence that infertility should be classed as a disease, reported the Daily Telegraph.

They said it added weight to the argument that IVF should receive greater public funding, because infertility was a disease in its own right.

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Surrogate Mothers Help Couples Who Can’t Conceive

brigitte

As a pediatric nurse at St. John’s Hospital, Buffy Lael sees the beauty of childbirth daily. It wasn’t surprising that she longed for a baby of her own.

After years of trying — including fertilization treatments — and several miscarriages, it seemed her dream was not to be. But where nature and science let her down, her good friend never would.

Antonea Wolf Lael is now 2 years old. Nea, as she is called, is still too young to understand how she came to be, but her mother is forthcoming in telling the tale of the special role her friend Brenda played.

Around three years ago, Buffy and her husband, John, were out to dinner with Brenda and Scott Wade of Cantrall. The two couples had been friends for years, but it still came as a shock when Brenda offered to serve as a surrogate mother so the Laels could finally have a child.

“I immediately started crying and was in disbelief. It was totally not expected at all,” Buffy said.

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Donor Siblings, and a New Kind of Family

brigitte

As we swelter toward July 4th and traditional family gatherings, I find myself contemplating the meaning of the very new, and very non-traditional, type of extended family that has dropped into my life.

Last month I posted eight words to the Donor Sibling Registry, a Web site that helps form connections among the children conceived by sperm, egg or embryo donations. Girl born October 2008. Boy born May 2010. I was required to enter one other key piece of information: the name of the sperm bank and ID number of the donor that we used to conceive our children. The match popped up instantly from my simple query, like a book in an online library catalog.

Two messages awaited me when I logged onto the Web site the following morning. Janedog in Canada has one child and wants to make a connection. Tripk6 has two children. They live on the West Coast. The three children are all born from the same donor that we used. “Doesn’t he make beautiful babies?” asked Tripk6 rhetorically.

Read full article.