UK Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo set out the way ahead for the Human Tissue and Embryology (HTE) bill by publishing the Government’s response to the Scrutiny Committee report on the bill. The bill represents a major overhaul of the law on assisted human reproduction and embryo research.
In the light of growing concerns about the separation of producers and consumers in our food system and the power of big supermarkets, new research funded by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) provides valuable insights into the motivations and practices of consumers and producers involved in ‘alternative food’ networks, which include schemes as varied as organic vegetable boxes, community gardens and farm animal adoption.
In a study of the maternity records of more than 6,000 women, David J.P. Barker, M.D., Ph.D., and Kent Thornburg, Ph.D., of Oregon Health & Science University discovered a strong correlation between the size and shape of a woman’s hips and her daughter’s risk of breast cancer. Wide, round hips, the researchers postulated, represent markers of high sex hormone concentrations in the mother, which increase her daughter’s vulnerability to breast cancer.
The University of Minnesota has been awarded nearly $14 million dollars over five years to be a lead study center in the National Children’s Study to assess the effects of environmental and genetic factors on child and human health in the United States. The study center will manage local participant recruitment and data collection in the largest and most comprehensive study of child and human health ever conducted in the United States.
The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing has received a $4.1 million federal grant to develop ways to improve the early growth and development of premature infants who have two or more social-environmental risks such as poverty or minority status.
The benefits of motherhood: Fetal Cell “Transplant” could be a hidden link between childbirth and reduced risk of breast cancer. Some benefits of motherhood are intangible, but one has been validated through biostatistical research: women who bear children have a reduced risk of developing breast cancer.
Some 20 to 40 percent of extremely premature infants suffer abnormal lung development leading to bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a chronic lung disease that can cause long-term breathing problems. Little is known about how to predict whether a premature infant will develop BPD in the weeks after birth, much less how to prevent or treat it. Now, gene-chip studies of these tiny babies’ umbilical cords provide unexpected, much-needed leads into predicting and treating this debilitating condition.
U-M expert says new cancer treatments, technologies give women more hope of preserving fertility. Once Alyssa Tushman knew her young son would not grow up motherless, her next question was whether he would be an only child.
In response to a debate over whether all pregnant women should be screened for subclinical hypothyroid disease, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommended against routine screening in a Committee Opinion in the October issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Extremely low birth weight premature infants who received breast milk shortly after birth, while still in intensive care units, had greater mental development scores at 30 months than did infants who were not fed breast milk, reported researchers in an NIH network. Moreover, infants fed breast milk were less likely to have been re-hospitalized after their initial discharge than were the infants not fed breast milk.