Month: October 2012

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HPV Shots Don’t Make Girls Promiscuous Study Says

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CHICAGO — Shots that protect against cervical cancer do not make girls promiscuous, according to the first study to compare medical records for vaccinated and unvaccinated girls.

The researchers didn’t ask girls about having sex, but instead looked at “markers” of sexual activity after vaccination against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, or HPV. Specifically, they examined up to three years of records on whether girls had sought birth control advice; tests for sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy; or had become pregnant.

Very few of the girls who got the shots at age 11 or 12 had done any of those over the next three years, or by the time they were 14 or 15. Moreover, the study found no difference in rates of those markers compared with unvaccinated girls. Read full article.

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Protein Mutation Linked to Male Infertility

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Sydney: Mutations in a protein called RABL2 shortens sperm tails, crippling their swimming ability (motility) and lowering sperm production – all contributing to male infertility, says a study.

The team led by Moira O`Bryan, professor from Monash University`s School of Biomedical Sciences in Austraia, found that mutated RABL2 resulted in sperm tails 17 percent shorter than normal, lowering sperm production by 50 percent.

O`Bryan said the research fitted another piece in the jigsaw puzzle of sperm development. “The mutations in the RABL2 gene are very likely to cause infertility,” said O`Bryan, the journal Public Library of Science Genetics reports. Read full article.

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Utah Court: No Benefits for Sperm Donor’s Offspring

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Utah Supreme Court ruled Friday that a Utah boy who was conceived with the frozen sperm of his dead father does not qualify for Social Security survivor’s benefits.

Gayle Burns had been trying to get survivor’s benefits for a son who was conceived with her husband’s sperm two years after the husband died of infection caused by a stem-cell transplant.

Michael Burns had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, or cancer of lymphoid tissue. He signed a contract to leave the preserved, frozen sperm to his wife if he died.

Gayle Burns has said her husband didn’t expect to die, because he had been cancer free, or to have to make legal arrangements to preserve Social Security benefits for his future son. Michael Burns died in 2001. Read full article.

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Young Women Often Don’t Resume Condom Use After Stopping Contraception

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Adolescent girls who use hormonal contraceptive birth control, stop using condoms as often as they would have before, a finding seen in an alarming new study, conducted by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine. Researchers claim that when these young women stop taking their pills, they do not resume the use of condoms, which can result in the sexually transmitted infections, (STIs) and unwanted pregnancy.

The trial involved 1,194 young, sexually active girls between the ages of 15 and 24 who were going to Planned Parenthood clinics to start with contraceptive pills, injections, patches, or vaginal rings. All of these women were not planning to get pregnant within a year’s time. Read full article.

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Breast cancer quadruples in 15 years

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The number of Korean women diagnosed with breast cancer quadrupled over the last 15 years due to a more westernized lifestyle and lower birth and breastfeeding rates, health experts said.

According to a report by the Korea Breast Cancer Society, the number of patients with the disease surged to 16,398 in 2010 from 3,801 in 1996. The number of breast cancer patients in the population per 100,000 people also jumped to 67.2 in 2010 from 16.7 in 1996, it added. Read full article.

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Oklahoma Lawmakers File Brief in Support of Regulating Emergency Contraception

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OKLAHOMA CITY — Fifty-seven Oklahoma legislators filed a brief Wednesday in the Oklahoma Supreme Court defending a state law regulating emergency contraception.

In 2011, the legislature approved House bill 1970, which required Oklahoma physicians to administer such drugs in accordance with U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines. At least eight women have died following the use of “abortion-inducing drugs” in an off-label, unapproved manner, according to a written statement by the Oklahoma State Senate. Read full article.

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Child Free Women Feel Little Distress Study Finds

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Women who choose to be childfree feel more pressure to reproduce than other women without children, but they’re less distressed about their childfree lifestyle than other non-moms, new research finds.

Unsurprisingly, women who wanted children but did not have them because of fertility or medical issues were the most distressed, according to the study published in the October issue of The Journal of Marriage and Family. Read full article.

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Moodiness, Hot Flashes, Sleep Problems? It May Be Peri-Menopause

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At this stage in my life — moving into my late 30s, with many friends rounding the corner into their 40s — I’m starting to hear rumblings, rumors and some early ranting about peri-menopause, and I don’t particularly like it.

Although it means a winding up of your reproductive years and seems to signal getting, um, old, there’s no real reason for dread or alarm, says gynecologist Margery Gass, executive director of the nonprofit North American Menopause Society. “Peri-menopause is a normal and natural phase of a woman’s life — it’s not a deficiency state and it’s not a disease,” she says, noting that peri-menopause ends — and menopause begins — when a woman hasn’t had a period in a full year. Read full article.

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BPA May Worsen Women’s Fertility Problems

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Exposure to the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) may reduce fertility among women who already have fertility problems, a new study suggests.

The study involved women trying to conceive children through in vitro fertilization (IVF), a fertility treatment that includes taking hormones to stimulate egg production. These eggs are then collected, and researchers attempt to fertilize them in a laboratory.

In the study, doctors collected 24 percent fewer eggs from women with high levels of BPA in their bodies, compared with women who had low levels of the industrial chemical.

Women with high BPA levels also had fewer eggs that were successfully fertilized. Read full article.