http://www.health.am/pregnancy/ http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/teen-pregnancy-abortion-rates/ http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/teen-pregnancy-abortion-rates/ Birth and abortion rates among U.S. teens fell to record lows in 2008 as increased use of contraceptives sent the overall teen pregnancy rate to its lowest level since at least 1972, a study showed on Wednesday. But disparities among racial and ethnic groups continued to persist, with black and Hispanic teens experiencing pregnancy and abortion rates two to four times higher than their white peers, the Guttmacher Institute, the nonprofit sexual health research group that conducted the analysis, said. The Guttmacher researchers looked at government statistics on teen-age sex, pregnancies and births, as well as the institute’s own data on abortions for 2008, the most recent year for which all the numbers were available. Pregnancy news 2012-02-08T22:56:00-08:00 http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/think-you-cant-get-pregnant/ http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/think-you-cant-get-pregnant/ Almost half of women who said they’d been struggling to get pregnant for at least a year ended up having a baby despite not getting fertility treatment, in a new study from Australia. That success rate was only slightly lower than in women who also reported trouble conceiving and opted for treatment with fertility hormones or in vitro fertilization (IVF). “Many women aged up to 36 years with a history of infertility can achieve spontaneous conception and live birth without using fertility treatment indicating (they) are sub-fertile rather than infertile,” study researcher Danielle Herbert of the University of Queensland School of Population Health in Brisbane told Reuters Health in an email. That means that if nothing is clearly wrong - men make enough sperm, and women are ovulating regularly - couples who have had trouble conceiving should still be optimistic they can get pregnant on their own, researchers said. Pregnancy news 2012-02-03T08:08:01-08:00 http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/raises-risk-of-unplanned-pregnancy/ http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/raises-risk-of-unplanned-pregnancy/ Pfizer Inc is reaching out directly to women consumers to warn them about its U.S. recall of one million packets of birth control pills as concerns mounted that a manufacturing error could raise the risk of unplanned pregnancies. The world’s largest drugmaker recalled 14 lots of Lo/Ovral-28 and 14 lots of the generic counterpart Norgestrel and Ethinyl Estradiol late on Tuesday, prompting panicked exchanges on social media like Twitter. Litigators began soliciting new clients who may have suffered health problems or unplanned pregnancy as a result. Pregnancy news 2012-02-02T18:06:01-08:00 http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/carrying-multiples-triplets/ http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/carrying-multiples-triplets/ Multiple pregnancies occur when the uterus nurtures more than one fetus. Giving birth to twins is the most common form of multiple pregnancies. In human, multiple pregnancies are very rare. They are more common in the animal kingdom. One, out of 80 women, gives birth to twins. The other forms of multiple pregnancies are too rare, with only one in every 6,400 women giving birth to triplets. Higher order multiple births like quadruples and quintuplets are ever rarer. However, high order multiple pregnancies are not completely unknown. Many times, the babies are safely delivered and they have good chances of survival too. There have been a few cases of octuplets (eight offspring) too. Only one of them died at birth, while the rest are still leading a normal like. Frequencies of multiple pregnancies: Twins are born to one in 80 women. Triplets are born to one in every 6400 women, while the higher order pregnancies happen to one in every 700,000 women. However, in most cases of higher order multiple pregnancies, the babies fail to survive for too long Pregnancy news 2012-01-27T16:46:01-08:00 http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/connection-between-birth-weights-and-armed-conflict/ http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/connection-between-birth-weights-and-armed-conflict/ A new study shows pregnant women exposed to armed conflict have a higher risk of giving birth to underweight babies, a result that could change the way aid is delivered to developing countries. “From a development side we need to ask, `Who is the population we should be focusing on?’” said Hani Mansour, Ph.D., assistant professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver who conducted the study with Daniel Rees, Ph.D., a CU Denver professor of economics. “Our results provide another reason why pregnant women deserve special attention when armed conflict breaks out.” The study, the first to examine the relationship between prenatal exposure to armed conflict and birth weight, will be published in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Development Economics.  Pregnancy news 2012-01-18T22:20:00-08:00 http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/thyroid-check-in-pregnancy/ http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/thyroid-check-in-pregnancy/ Check-ups during pregnancy tend to focus around the waist. But there’s growing debate about which mothers-to-be should have a gland in their neck tested, too. Numerous studies since 1999 have found that an underactive thyroid can raise a woman’s risk of miscarriage, premature birth, or a lower IQ for her baby — even if it’s so mildly sluggish that she feels no symptoms. The problem: While serious cases are treated with a hormone pill, so far there’s little evidence that treating the milder cases makes a difference. So guidelines about who should be tested vary widely. Now a peek at prenatal testing from one of the country’s largest medical labs suggests that nearly a quarter of pregnant women are getting the simple thyroid blood test regardless of whether they have symptoms. Pregnancy news 2012-01-03T18:05:00-08:00 http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/women-take-prescription-drugs-during-pregnancy/ http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/women-take-prescription-drugs-during-pregnancy/ Almost two-thirds of women in British Columbia filled at least one prescription at some point in their pregnancy, including drugs with potential risks, according to a new study by University of British Columbia researchers. The study, published online today in the journal Clinical Therapeutics, is the first of its kind in Canada. Researchers analyzed population-based outpatient prescription claims data for patterns of prescription drug use during pregnancy in B.C. from 2001 to 2006. The researchers found that 63.5 per cent of pregnant women in B.C. filled at least one prescription. One in thirteen – or 7.8 per cent – filled a prescription for a medicine known to be risky in pregnancy – most often for select medicines for anxiety, insomnia and depression. Drugs that are strictly contraindicated pregnancy, however, were filled in less than 0.5% of pregnancies. Pregnancy news 2011-12-16T20:55:00-08:00 http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/fda-advisers-ortho-evra-patch/ http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/fda-advisers-ortho-evra-patch/ U.S. drug advisers recommended that the label for Johnson and Johnson’s Ortho Evra birth control patch be simplified to better explain the risk of blood clots. In a 20 to 3 vote with one abstention, advisers to the Food and Drug Administration found that the current label for Ortho Evra inadequately reflects the risks women face by using it. It is the only contraceptive patch sold in the United States. The panel voted 19 to 5 that the patch’s risks were outweighed by its benefits, such as pregnancy prevention through a once-weekly application. Pregnancy news 2011-12-11T20:30:01-08:00 http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/pregnant-women-at-low-risk-of-complications/ http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/pregnant-women-at-low-risk-of-complications/ Women with low risk pregnancies should be able to choose where they give birth, concludes a study published on bmj.com today. Although it shows that first-time mums who opt for a home birth are at a higher risk of adverse outcomes, the overall risk is low in all birth settings. The researchers say their results “support a policy of offering women with low risk pregnancies a choice of birth setting” and will enable women and their partners to have informed discussions with health professionals about planned place of birth. The benefits and risks of birth in different settings have been widely debated in recent years, but there is a lack of good quality evidence comparing the risk of rare but serious perinatal adverse outcomes in these settings. Perinatal refers to the period just before, during or shortly after birth. Pregnancy news 2011-11-25T18:11:00-08:00 http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/when-does-pregnancy-begin-doctors-disagree/ http://www.health.am/pregnancy/more/when-does-pregnancy-begin-doctors-disagree/ Though most doctors will give you a definition of when pregnancy begins, it’s not always the same one, according to a new survey. Most of the polled obstetrician-gynecologists believe pregnancy begins when the sperm fertilizes the egg. But a minority say it doesn’t begin until a week later when the fertilized egg implants in the uterus—the definition given by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG). “People say that the medical profession has settled on this,” said Dr. Farr Curlin, the senior author of the study and a professor at the University of Chicago. “And what our data show rather clearly is that it is not at all settled among the medical profession.” Pregnancy news 2011-11-17T23:24:00-08:00