Author: brigitte

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Why do women get hot flashes during menopause?

brigitte

Hot flushes affect millions of people, and not just women. Yet, it is still unclear what causes the episodes of temperature discomfort, often accompanied by profuse sweating.

Now a team of researchers around Dr. Naomi Rance, a professor in the department of pathology at the UA College of Medicine, has come closer to understanding the mechanism of hot flushes, a necessary step for potential treatment options down the road. This research was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team identified a group of brain cells known as KNDy neurons as a likely control switch of hot flushes. KNDy neurons (pronounced “candy”) are located in the hypothalamus, a portion of the brain controlling vital functions that also serves as the switchboard between the central nervous system and hormone signals.

“Although the KNDy neurons are a very small population of cells, our research reveals that they play extremely important roles in how the body controls its energy resources, reproduction and temperature,” said Melinda Mittelman-Smith, who led the study as part of her doctoral thesis. “They are true multitaskers.”

By studying KNDy neurons in rats, the research team created an animal model of menopause to elucidate the biological mechanisms of temperature control in response to withdrawal of the hormone estrogen, the main trigger of the changes that go along with menopause. Read full article.

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Fertile Gals Look & Sound More Attractive: Study

brigitte

Men find women more attractive near ovulation, when they’re most fertile, suggests the largest study yet to look at whether a gal’s allure changes over the course of her menstrual cycle.

The findings are plausible, the scientists note, since the ratings of attractiveness were related to hormonal shifts, which may cause facial and vocal changes in women.

The research, detailed online Nov. 15 in the journal Hormones and Behavior, adds to the idea that a women’s cycle is linked with various physiological and behavioral changes. For instance, earlier studies have found that when fertile, women’s sexual desire increases, as does their preference for strong-jawed men. Past studies have also shown men find fertile ladies’ dance moves more attractive, as well as her voice and smell, with one well-known 2007 study showing erotic dancers brought in better tips during the fertile phase of their cycle. Read full article.

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50 Reasons HHS Should Reverse its Decision on Emergency Contraception

brigitte

Here is a $12 billion problem we really can actually go a long way towards eliminating.

There are 62 million American women of childbearing age, 43 million of whom are “at risk” for unintended pregnancy. Women manage their fertility for an average of 30 years. “At risk”—like an unplanned pregnancy is something that just happens to you, out of your control. NOT. These pregnancies have consequences for all of us. Someone needs to introduce the Purity Bear to the $12 billion dollars worth of consequences. And that’s a conservative estimate.

Most girls and women (some of whom are part of a couple…) don’t get pregnant if they don’t want to when they have access to safe, affordable birth control, including emergency contraception. There are no medical or scientific reasons why girls and women need prescriptions for methods relevant to their needs. Just religious, shame-based ones based on stereotypes, control and fear. We should be scheduling birth control biotechnologies the way we do vaccines and they should not require prescriptions. That or we should start requiring prescriptions for condoms. Exactly how long do you think that option would fly with the Pecker Patrol?

The most obvious and immediate issue is the fact that emergency contraception, Plan B, is not available without a prescription and should be. The longer term issue is why American women are ill-informed about and therefore not using long-acting forms of reversible contraception. Read full article.

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How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society

brigitte

OVER THE PAST HALF CENTURY, parenthood has undergone a change so simple yet so profound we are only beginning to grasp the enormity of its implications. It is that we have our children much later than we used to. This has come to seem perfectly unremarkable; indeed, we take note of it only when celebrities push it to extremes—when Tony Randall has his first child at 77; Larry King, his fifth child by his seventh wife at 66; Elizabeth Edwards, her last child at 50. This new gerontological voyeurism—I think of it as doddering-parent porn—was at its maximally gratifying in 2008, when, in almost simultaneous and near-Biblical acts of belated fertility, two 70-year-old women in India gave birth, thanks to donor eggs and disturbingly enthusiastic doctors. One woman’s husband was 72; the other’s was 77.

These, though, are the headlines. The real story is less titillating, but it tells us a great deal more about how we’ll be living in the coming years: what our families and our workforce will look like, how healthy we’ll be, and also—not to be too eugenicist about it—the future well-being of the human race. Read full article.

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University Of Washington Researchers Develop Dissolving Condom

brigitte

A new, discreet condom has been developed that prevents pregnancy and protects against sexually transmitted diseases by dissolving inside of the body and releasing preventative drugs after use.

Researchers at the University of Washington developed the condom from tiny microfibers where strength, solubility and shape can all be adjusted for best personal use. Published in the Public Library of Science’s “PLoS One” journal, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave the researchers nearly $1 million to pursue the new “electrospinning” technology.

The “electrospinning” method uses an electric field to charge fluid through air to create the very fine, nanometer-sized fibers.

“Our dream is to create a product women can use to protect themselves from HIV infection and unintended pregnancy,” wrote corresponding author Kim Woodrow, a UW assistant professor of bioengineering. “We have the drugs to do that. It’s really about delivering them in a way that makes them more potent, and allows a woman to want to use it.” Read full article.

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Quigley: Who’s Your Mommy? New problems with surrogacy contracts

brigitte

If a married woman has a baby, her husband is automatically named father, even if she uses a sperm donor or her spouse has been in jail or Afghanistan for a year and she’s been fooling around with every guy in town. A suspicious husband can demand blood or DNA tests to disprove paternity, but if he doesn’t challenge, he is deemed the father, no matter what.

Disputed motherhood was never an issue. Until recently. It used to be simple: the woman who delivered a baby was its mother. Pretty obvious, right?

Then along came surrogacy contracts, when some women agreed to bear children for other women.

 Now stick with me here. This can get complicated. A surrogate may agree to become pregnant with her own egg and sperm from the intended father. Or she may use an egg from the intended mother who can ovulate but not carry a child to term. Or she can accept an egg from a third party. Sperm can be from either the intended father or a donor. Read full article.
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More women turn to frozen eggs for help with infertility

brigitte

Ellen Carpenter delayed marriage until she found Mr. Right, but by that time she was 38 years old, making it much more difficult to have children.

After getting pregnant with the help of hormone injections, the Frederick County resident lost the baby — a girl with severe body malformations — in the first trimester. She explored other options and chose to use frozen eggs from a donor. Today, Carpenter is the mother of a rambunctious 18-month-old named Zachary.

A growing number of women are turning to frozen eggs to solve their fertility problems as the controversial procedure that long raised safety concerns slowly gains acceptance. Fertility clinics around the country are working to make frozen donor eggs more available to women, and advances in medical technology such as flash freezing have helped improve the procedure’s success rate.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine added its stamp of approval in October to the use of frozen eggs on a limited basis by declaring that the procedure is no longer considered experimental. The group found that successful pregnancy rates were the same using frozen eggs as fresh eggs.

But frozen egg use still raises concerns and may not become mainstream any time soon. Read full article.

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Doctors And Women’s Groups Urge Feds To Relax Plan B Restrictions

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Dozens of medical, women’s health and reproductive health groups marked the first anniversary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ decision to maintain age restrictions on the sale of the morning-after birth control pill without a prescription by urging her to reconsider that decision.

“The unique dual-labeling of Plan B One Step has led to confusion among consumers and health care professionals alike, particularly regarding age restrictions and whether men and women can purchase non-prescription emergency contraception,” said a letter signed by more than three dozen women’s health, reproductive rights and individual providers of health care. Read full article.

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The Sperm Whisperer

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Young whippersnappers tap iPads while old men work sudoku puzzles, shifting uneasily in their seats.Orthopedic footwear mingles with hipster skinny jeans as a battle of bifocals and vanity glasses unfolds in a Murray Hill waiting room.

The mood is anxious as men both vernal and venerable wait to see urologist and superstar sperm doc Joseph Alukal.

Until three months ago, things were status quo for the 37-year-old fertility phenom, who typically addresses issues like performance anxiety, cancer and sexual dysfunction.

But a recent landmark study in the science journal Nature, linking advanced paternal age with higher incidents of autism and other maladies in offspring, has sent young New York men into a tailspin. And their little swimmers straight to Alukal’s test tubes.

“People keep asking me, ‘Doc, should I freeze my sperm? What if I meet the right girl 10 or 15 years from now?'” says Dr. Alukal, director of male reproductive health at NYU Langone Medical Center.

“It’s absolutely something I’m seeing more of in my office.”

Nearly two dozen men have come in since the research came out, and “more than 50 percent of the guys who come to me actually do it,” he says. Read full article.

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Fertility Clinics’ Ad Regulation Falls Short, Report Says

brigitte

Smiling babies. Confusing statistics. Talk of miracles. There is too little oversight of how fertility clinics market themselves online, a new report charges, possibly misleading women about their chances of getting pregnant.

In the 30-plus page paper — among the first to examine how fertility clinics market themselves on the web — Jim Hawkins, an assistant professor of law at the University of Houston, looked at all 372 fertility clinics in the United States, that are registered with the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology and that have websites. SART, an affiliate of the non-profit American Society for Reproductive Medicine, represents more than 85 percent of the fertility clinics in the U.S.

According to the report, nearly 80 percent of the clinics’ websites had photos of babies on their homepage. Thirty percent used the word “dream” and nearly 9 percent used the word “miracle,” which, Hawkins argues, may push patients to disregard the high costs of fertility treatment (the average cost of a single cycle of in vitro fertilization is $12,400) and create false hope.

“I don’t think this creates some sort of deception,” Hawkins told HuffPost — at least not a deception that would be illegal under current laws, he said, but showing photos of babies and using such words may suggest to some patients that success is a likely outcome. Read full article.