Author: brigitte

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Follicle count could predict menopause

brigitte

B0007266 Oocyte in follicleVANDERBILT (US) —Scientists have found a potential way to determine the start of menopause—findings that could lead to better fertility assessment and insight into disease risk.

The researchers examined the relationship between antral follicle count (AFC)—the number of early and potentially egg-producing follicles in the ovaries (as seen on ultrasound)—and the onset of natural menopause, which is the permanent end to ovarian egg production.

Melissa Wellons, assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University, and colleagues looked at this in women aged 34 to 49 who participated in an ongoing study focused on coronary artery disease development. As part of the study, AFC was measured in 2002-2003, with follow up in 2009-2010. Read full article.

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Whatever Happened to Stem Cells?

brigitte

stem cellsIn 1998, the stunning promise of embryonic stem cells was discovered, and it was thought that we just might be on the threshold of an age of miracles. But no miracle is a match for politics.

One day, when you are ill, when your heart finally beats a thousand times too many, when your liver is sclerotic beyond use, when your pancreas stops producing insulin, when your kidneys no longer protect you from toxins, Dr. Anthony Atala wants to heal you. In his vision, you will visit a hospital in Omaha or San Francisco or Buffalo, and a specialist will diagnose you. Then you’ll have blood taken to determine your genetic makeup, and then those results will be transmitted to an office manager in charge of a sterile white room in North Carolina that Atala has built. In a few days a small vial of stem cells that match your immunological profile perfectly will be extracted from a cryogenic tank in that room and shipped to your surgeon, who will use them to build you a new organ from scratch. It will take four to eight weeks to build and grow and implant the organ, and then you will be whole once again. Read full article.

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Surrogate pregnancies on rise despite cost hurdles

brigitte

6578-000099But the Chicago advertising executive never expected she would have to sell her house, drop out of business school and move back in with her parents to tackle costs associated with hiring the surrogate mother who delivered a healthy baby girl on her behalf earlier this year.

She joins the selective but growing ranks of would-be parents – primarily upscale professionals with ample discretionary cash – turning to gestational surrogates to help them fulfill their dreams of having biologically connected children. This differs from traditional surrogacy, in which the surrogate is the child’s genetic mother.

But the costs faced by people working with gestational surrogates are daunting, with few options outside of creative self-funding or high-priced loans.

“I felt like movie stars do that,” said DiSantis, who despite a six-figure-plus income struggled with expenses that she said ultimately approached $300,000. “I didn’t know what it was or how it worked.” Read full article.

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Sperm quality rises in winter

brigitte

EggSperm_PicHuman semen quality may rise and fall in seasonal variation, with the best quality being produced in the winter and spring.

Research suggests that semen produced during that time has a greater concentration of sperm of which a higher percentage are fast moving and appear normal when looked at under a microscope.

Researchers took semen samples from 6,477 men who had been referred with their partner to a fertility clinic in Israel. Men who had sperm counts in the normal range averaged 71 million sperm per millilitre in spring, which fell to a low of 64 million in autumn. Although total sperm motility was greatest during the summer months, the percentage of fast-moving sperm, thought to increase the chances of fertilisation, was highest in winter.

In men with lower than normal sperm concentration seasonal variation was less marked. The highest percentage of sperm with normal morphology was in the spring, and a slight trend towards greater motility was also observed during this time. However neither the concentration of sperm or the percentage of fast-moving sperm altered significantly between seasons. Read full article.

 

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2 in 5 Parents Don’t Support HPV Vaccinations for Daughters

brigitte

hpv vaccineNew study shows that more than 2 out of every 5 parents in the U.S. find vaccination against human papilloma virus unnecessary.

According to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 11,967 new cases of HPV-associated cervical cancer are diagnosed in the United States each year. The agency recommends the HPV vaccination for all pre-teen girls and boys aged 11 to 12.

“HPV causes essentially 100 percent of cervical cancer and 50 percent of all Americans get infected at least once with HPV. It’s a silent infection. You cannot tell when you’ve been exposed or when you have it. While most HPV infections clear, a percentage linger and start the process of cancerous changes. The HPV vaccine is an anti-cancer vaccine,” said Robert Jacobson, M.D., a pediatrician with the Mayo Clinic Children’s Center and senior author of the study.

The number of parents saying that they wouldn’t get their children vaccinated has grown over the past few years. In 2010, about 44 percent had said no to the vaccine compared to about 40 percent in 2005. Read full article.

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Pregnancy after 50 – extending the Fertility Clock

brigitte

pregnancy after 50Healthy postmenopausal women shouldn’t be discouraged from pursuing pregnancy using donor eggs or embryos, one of the world’s largest organizations of reproductive medicine says.

In a shift in its official stance on whether women of “advanced age” should be discouraged from achieving pregnancy, the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine now says that some women over 50 who are healthy and “well prepared” for child rearing are candidates to receive donated eggs.

The society sees it as a natural extension of what science can do. But not everyone agrees with the idea of artificially extending fertility past 50. The group’s guidelines strongly influence practice in Canada.

While infertility may be a natural consequence of menopause, the committee says that allowing women to conceive through egg donation “is not such a significant departure from other currently accepted fertility treatments as to be considered ethically inappropriate in postmenopausal women.”

The old statement, published in 2004, said that, given the physical and psychological risks involved, “postmenopausal pregnancy should be discouraged.” Read full article.

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Surrogate mother had the right to choose

brigitte

istock_000017606854xsmall(CNN) — If you can come up with a tale that better illustrates America’s messed-up moral views on abortion, parenting and personal freedom than the story of Crystal Kelley — the surrogate mother who was offered $10,000 by the parents to abort the fetus she was carrying for them — then you’ve got a better imagination than I do.

Let’s run through the story quickly: Kelley had agreed to be a surrogate and was being paid $2,222 a month by the parents for her trouble. But an ultrasound scan of the fetus showed serious abnormalities. Fearing that the child would never lead a normal life — whatever that may be — the parents asked Kelley to abort.

Although the surrogacy agreement contained a clause to this effect, Kelley refused. This is where things became, to put it charitably, unseemly.

The parents offered Kelly an extra $10,000 to terminate the pregnancy. Although she said she was against abortion for religious and moral reasons, Kelley eventually thought she might be able to quash those ethical qualms if the parents paid her $15,000 — $5,000 apparently being the difference between “against” and “fine with it.” The parents refused, and Kelley says she regretted the offer. Read full article.

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Why it’s important not to stress over infertility

brigitte

Baby's feetTAMPA (FOX 13) – Many families want to add a baby to the family, but conceiving isn’t always the easiest thing to do. The CDC estimates almost seven million women have difficulty, and it’s an emotional and heartbreaking problem.

For eight years, Karen Kelly tried having a baby with her husband, but was unsuccessful. Karen visited doctors, explored in vitro, and considered adoption. She says the experience was stressful.

“You start out that marriage saying, ‘We’ll do it when we are ready’ and you think it’s going to naturally happen, then conception came, for us, an ordeal,” explained Karen. “It’s a huge issue that required medical intervention, and medical analysis to figure out what was wrong.”

Karen’s journey pointed her to a familiar face. Retired WTVT anchor Kathy Fountain now counsels women like Karen, and helps couples overcome infertility.

“The ability to conceive is such a primal instinct,” Fountain explained. “Not having a baby when you want to can cause stress and anxiety. Studies have shown infertility can cause depression, just as a woman with heart disease, AIDS, or cancer, which are the most stressful things you can go through.” Read full article.

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Genetic mother of twins wins historic Irish surrogacy case

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Dublin CourtsThe genetic mother of twins born through a surrogate pregnancy has won her court battle to be declared the legal mother on the children’s birth certificates.

In this landmark case the genetic mother defeated the Irish government. In the past Ireland had refused the mother’s demands to be recorded as a parent on the children’s birth certs. The Irish State’s defense for their stance had been the 1937 constitution, which states that the woman who gives birth to the baby is recorded as the mother.

On Tuesday Dublin High Court Justice Henry Abbott said that these 1937 laws governing birth certificates and parentage needed to be updated to reflect the growing use of artificial insemination, embryo implantation, and other fertility techniques.

The genetic mother in question, whose identity is withheld under Irish law, had been declared medically unable to carry her child. Her sister volunteered to serve as a surrogate mother. Read full article.

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Omega-3s May Lead to Healthier Babies

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Pregnant women who took daily supplements of DHA, a type of omega-3 fatty acid, had longer gestations, bigger babies and fewer early preterm births, according to a new clinical trial.

In the double-blinded study, published online in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers randomly assigned 154 healthy women to take 600 milligrams of DHA during the last half of pregnancy and 147 to take a placebo.

After adjusting for maternal education, socioeconomic status, prior pregnancy, smoking and other risk factors, they found that babies whose mothers took supplements were almost a half pound heavier than those of the mothers who took none, and they were slightly longer with larger head circumferences.

Almost 5 percent of mothers who took the placebo gave birth at 34 weeks’ gestation or less, compared with only 0.6 percent of the mothers who took DHA. Read full article.