Author: brigitte

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Adoption Can Boost Quality of Life for Infertile Couples Study Finds

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MONDAY, Nov. 19 (HealthDay News) — Couples who adopt children after unsuccessful treatment for fertility problems typically have a high quality of life, a new study finds.

Swedish researchers compared outcomes for a variety of types of couples: those whose in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment failed; those whose IVF treatment resulted in children; couples who decided to adopt after unsuccessful IVF treatment; and couples with no fertility problems.

The couples who underwent IVF treatment were assessed five years after their treatment. Quality of life among the more than 970 men and women was measured as psychological well-being and a feeling of connection.

Quality of life was highest among couples who adopted children after unsuccessful IVF treatment and lowest among couples who remained childless after their IVF treatment had failed, the investigators found. Read full article.

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Judge Sides with Christian Publisher on Contraceptive Coverage

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WASHINGTON: A federal judge on Friday temporarily prevented the Obama administration from forcing a Christian publishing company to provide its employees with certain contraceptives under the new health care law.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton granted a preliminary injunction sought by Tyndale House Publishers, which doesn’t want to provide employees with contraceptives that it equates with abortion.

At issue are contraceptives such as Plan B and IUDs. If a woman already is pregnant, the Plan B pill has no effect. It prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg, and according to the medical definition, pregnancy doesn’t begin until a fertilized egg implants itself into the wall of the uterus. The Plan B pill may also be able to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus. IUDs mainly work by blocking sperm but may also have the same uterus effect. To Tyndale, these methods are not morally different than abortion. Read full article.

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Should Doctors Add a Birth Control Vital Sign?

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(Reuters Health) – An effort to develop a birth control “vital sign” measure gets doctors to document women’s use of contraception, but it doesn’t make them any more likely to include family planning counseling during visits, according to a new study.

The proposed “vital sign” consists of questions about contraception and pregnancy. “We were hoping that this would be a prompt for much more provision of counseling by clinicians and what we saw was it only minimally affected the type of counseling that women were given,” said Dr. Eleanor Schwarz, the lead author of the study and the director of the Women’s Health Services Research Unit at the University of Pittsburgh.

“We got better documentation (by doctors), but we can’t say that women were better informed,” she added.

Unlike blood pressure, heart rate and other vital signs, use of birth control is not often addressed during doctor visits, Schwarz said, but it should be for women of childbearing age.

According to Schwarz’s study, published in the Annals of Family Medicine, six percent of pregnancies are exposed to prescription medications that can cause a birth defect, because a large proportion of pregnancies are unplanned and birth control counseling rarely happens during physician visits. Read full article.

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Michigan Has Huge Hopes for Tiny Stem Cells

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Deep inside metal drums of liquid nitrogen at the University of Michigan might be the key to a replacement heart valve for 9-year-old Will Marzolf.

Or the formula for treating the Huntington’s disease that killed Krissi Putansu’s grandfather and uncle and now threatens her mother. Or the clues to protecting Marlene Goodman’s great-children from the genetics that have curled her fingers to useless angles.

Embryonic stem cell research is a fledgling science, but four years after Michigan voters lifted the ban on such research, U-M is staking its claim.

“They are promise,” Goodman said of an embryonic stem cell line known as UM11-1PGD. Read full article.

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Advice for Men Struggling With Infertility

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(NewsUSA/SpermCheck.com) – While women are often the first to undergo a battery of tests when conception is slow to happen, almost half of all infertility problems are directly attributed to the male. Low sperm count is the most common culprit, so analyzing sperm count is considered a key first step by infertility specialists. However, a new survey conducted for SpermCheck Fertility, the only FDA-approved at-home sperm count screening test, finds that only 17 percent of men ever get tested.

While a majority of men are not getting tested, according to Pamela Madsen, fertility advocate and founder of The American Fertility Association, they are also doing little to prepare for conception. She says there are several things men can do to help boost fertility naturally. Read full article.

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Women’s Knowledge on Infertility: Interview with Barbara Collura

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In the United States, 7.3 million people are affected by infertility, in which a couple cannot conceive, according to RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association.

There are two categories of infertility. They are primary infertility and secondary infertility. With primary infertility, pregnancy has not occurred after at least a year of intercourse. With secondary infertility, couples have been able to get pregnant at least once, but have not been able to get pregnant again.

This year at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine Annual Meeting (ASRM), the results of the In the Know: Fertility IQ 2012 survey were presented. The survey, which included more than 400 health care providers, found significant difference between what health care providers are reporting and what patients are reporting. Read entire article.

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Jacksonville Doctor Has a New Tool to Identify Endometriosis

brigitte

Endometriosis occurs when bits of the uterus lining grow outside the uterus, at most extremes causing infertility, striking more than half a million women today. However according to ActionNewsJax.com, one man, Dr. Samuel Brown of Jacksonville Florida, made it his mission to find new ways to help his patients overcome this disease.

Dr. Brown is the first in the world to use a robot and fluorescent imaging to identify endometriosis and remove it. Read full article.

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Flying Solo: More Women Abandon Search for Prince Charming and Opt to Have IVF Baby

brigitte

SINGLE women in their late 30s are increasingly giving up waiting for ”Mr Right” and turning instead to IVF or assisted reproductive technology (ART) to fulfil their dream of having a baby.

IVF clinics in Sydney and Melbourne report the number of women using donor sperm to conceive a child has jumped 10 per cent over the past three years. An IVF Australia fertility specialist, Michael Chapman, said that, while lesbian couples accounted for some of the increase, the real growth was occurring with older, single heterosexual women.

”We’re seeing more and more of these ladies. Women who can’t find Mr Right but still want a child realise this is an option,” Professor Chapman said. ”It’s become almost normal to be a single mum. So when these women get to 38, 39, they go to donor sperm and do assisted reproduction.”

Categorised by the IVF industry as ”socially infertile”, these women rely on their mother, sister or a friend to support them through the IVF process in the absence of a partner. Read full article.

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Men Behind Most Unexplained Infertility Cases – And The New Test To Help Couples

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New research has given fresh hope to couples diagnosed with ‘unexplained infertility’.

A study of 239 couples with unexplained fertility found high sperm DNA damage in 80 per cent of the couples trying to conceive.

Currently, some 50,000 couples require fertility treatment in the UK every year, but up to one third of these are diagnosed with unexplained or idiopathic infertility, as tests are unable to find a cause for the problem.

The researchers from Queen’s University Belfast said the discovery will lead to better treatment for couples, saving them time, money and heartache.

Professor Sheena Lewis from the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences said: “For almost one third of couples, until now, there has been no obvious cause for infertility and these couples are given the diagnosis of ‘unexplained fertility’.

“These couples often invest a lot of time and money in fertility treatments like intrauterine insemination (IUI) unlikely to be successful. Read full article.

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UN Call Contraception Access a Universal Human Right

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Access to contraception is a universal human right that could dramatically improve the lives of women and children in poor countries, the United Nations announced Wednesday in a new report.

It is the first time the U.N. Population Fund’s annual report explicitly describes family planning as a human right.

“Family planning has a positive multiplier effect on development,” Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the fund, said in a written statement. “Not only does the ability for a couple to choose when and how many children to have help lift nations out of poverty, but it is also one of the most effective means of empowering women. Women who use contraception are generally healthier, better educated, more empowered in their households and communities and more economically productive. Women’s increased labor-force participation boosts nations’ economies.” Read full article.