March 12, 2010
Filed under: Sudden Infant Death — Alan @ 3:04 am
Researchers at Strasbourg University Hospital may have discovered an important new means of identifying babies at risk of SIDS with just a single blood test. They believe that determining the level of acetylcholine in a baby’s blood could be a key factor in calculating the likelihood of SIDS and possibly in preventing its occurrence.
Acetylcholine is a chemical substance, produced by the cardiac nerve that controls the heart rate. If too much of it is absorbed by the heart it can slow the heartbeat down to the point of stopping completely. The researchers confirmed that eight out of nine tissue samples taken from victims of SIDS contained high levels of acetylcholine.
Professor Pascal Bousquet, head of the research team at the University of Strasbourg, said that it is highly unusual to find such a marked anomaly in scientific research, and considers it a breakthrough in the quest for a way of pinpointing high-risk babies very early in their development. He thinks that if the anomaly can be identified with a blood test, we can try out existing drugs to see if they are effective in blocking the absorption of acetylcholine.
In the U.K the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths says that the research done by the French team is valuable and may lead to a better understanding of this syndrome. They agree that more research is called for in terms of the neurotransmitter receptors in the heart and their connection to SIDS vulnerability. At this stage, according to Professor Bousquet, there is no funding for such additional study.
March 6, 2010
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 4:23 am
Asda, the large supermarket chain, has announced that they will offer fertility drugs for sale without a profit, with the belief that it will cut costs for patients by hundreds of pounds. The grocer announced that their decision was based on a move to establish their pharmacy as one of the most competitive in the UK.
According to research conducted by Asda, around 63% of people are not aware that prices for private prescriptions vary depending upon which pharmacy they are filled at with an overwhelming amount of people, 76% to be exact, only using one pharmacy for every prescription.
The survey also revealed that a little over 90% of people had never taken the time to compare prices of prescriptions from different pharmacies.
Asda pharmacy has set its price of the fertility drugs at £1,171.41, which it claims will save most consumers around £820 compared to purchasing the drugs at a high street chemist.
At the moment, 71% of PCTs offer patients one or two free IVF treatments, after which most women choose to pay for one cycle or more out of their own pockets.
John Evans, the Asda superintendent pharmacist, stated that the IVF postcode lottery means that many women are forced to pay a high price if they need to continue on with IVF treatments. As over 80% of Asda’s customers are women, they felt it was only naturally to help reduce the high cost of IVF by offering the accompanying medication at a low cost.
Filed under: Baby public health — Alan @ 4:17 am
A new study conducted by scientists from the University of Maryland School of Medicine discovered that children in the womb that are exposed to cocaine will face negative consequences to their health, but not so much the cognitive and physical areas that health professionals once believed.
Instead, after a careful review of several major studies that looked at children that were exposed to cocaine in the womb but are now school aged, the impact was found in more subtle areas of behaviour, such as the ability to self-regulate their own behaviour and sustained attention.
When a woman uses cocaine during pregnancy the flow of oxygen and nutrients to the brain is interrupted which places the baby at risk for low birth weight, premature birth, and other health problems.
The research surprisingly showed however that there is not much of a connection between cocaine use during pregnancy and IQ, growth, language functioning, and academic achievement.
Although many of the children were found to be low in these areas, the research suggested that these problems were the by-product of a bad home environment that is often found around those that use cocaine.
The results also showed that the problems that cocaine is likely connected to-self regulated behaviour and sustained attention- was likely to become worse as the children mature into adults.
Senior author of the study Maureen M. Black and professor at the UMS of Medicine stated that the information gleamed from the research showed that simply because a child is exposed to cocaine in the womb does not mean that they are necessarily going to have hardships and trouble for the rest of their lives.
February 22, 2010
Filed under: Baby health — Alan @ 5:39 am
Advances in laparoscopic surgery that allows surgeons to repair birth defects while the baby is still in the womb, scientists may also be able to deliver DNA and cells in the future to treat devastating genetic diseases such as sickle cell anaemia before the child is born.
This new field is called foetal surgery and is a growing part of material medicine according to paediatric surgeon Scott Adzick from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who is the medical director of the centre for Foetal Diagnosis and Treatment and also the surgeon in chief.
Adzick continued to state that the ability to detect birth defects before birth has let physicians offer extra prenatal care but due to the fact that many babies are too ill to be treated after they leave the womb scientists were forced to develop the field of foetal surgery.
He also stated that a large majority of the anomalies that are treated at the Children’s Hospital are rare and only seen once or twice a year, but with the advancement of the field it is possible that a wider group of conditions may be possible to treat before birth, benefiting many children.
In the future Adzick hopes to see advances in gene therapy, high tech procedures, innovative surgeries, and stem cell treatments that can all lead to new advances in the current standards of foetal therapy.
Open foetal surgery is the process of opening the abdomen of the mother along with the uterus that the foetus can be operated on. Two common forms of the surgery target babies that have lung mass defects and compression on the heart that can prevent the heart from developing.
Filed under: Baby health — Alan @ 5:32 am
Some of the worst genetic diseases are starting to decline in the general population with a few almost disappearing completely due to the fact that genetic testing is becoming more popular before deciding if children are a good choice for couples.
In particular, Tay-Sachs, cystic fibrosis, and other odd disorders have decreased in number due to the increase of wider testing use. Clinical genetics chief of Columbia University, Dr. Wendy Chung, said that carrier screening has drastically reduced the presence of genetic disorders.
Chung stated that in the last five years she has only come across one case of Tay-Sachs, which is a neurological disease that forces children to lose their physical and mental abilities causing premature death to occur at the age of four.
Now most women’s routine prenatal care includes genetic testing causing many woman to terminate pregnancies when they find out the child is a carrier of one of these devastating diseases. In fact, a California study showed that the result of pre-natal screening is half as many babies are born with cystic fibrosis due to the fact that woman now choose abortion when it is diagnosed.
Embryo screening is also growing in popularity resulting in parents and fertility doctors carefully choosing embryos that do not carry any genes that are mutated and could possibly cause problems in children after birth.
Since 2006 embryo screening is on the rise over the last few years and becoming a common part of IVF according to reports from the Society for Associated Reproductive Techonology.
February 17, 2010
Filed under: Infertility — Alan @ 3:08 am
T
here is much ongoing controversy about the relative advantages and perils of ICSI, or Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection. A recent study carried out at the Institute of Child Health in London seems to confirm one of the perils.
Children conceived through ICSI are more likely to have a fertility problem, which is the problem that ICSI was meant to solve in the first place.
The procedure involves injecting a live sperm into a mature egg with a micro-needle, and it has proven effective in many cases where fertilization and pregnancy seemed impossible with the ‘conventional’ approach. However, with widespread use of ICSI, won’t the fertility of future males be in jeopardy?
As a reminder that males are not the only ones with a problem, St. Andrews and Edinburgh universities have published the results of a study on female fertility. This one concluded that of the two million eggs a woman is born with, she’ll have only about 12% of that number by the time she reaches the age of 30.
February 16, 2010
Filed under: Sudden Infant Death — Alan @ 6:08 am
Research conducted at Harvard Medical School suggests that babies with a low level of serotonin are more likely to suffer ‘cot death’, or sudden infant death (SIDS).
Findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that babies who died of cot death had a level of serotonin in their brain tissue that was about 26% lower than that found in babies whose death resulted from other causes.
The serotonin hormone is the one known to control sleeping and breathing patterns, and lack of a sufficient or ‘normal’ amount of the hormone leaves the baby unable to respond instinctively to reduce oxygen flow to the brain. A baby with adequate levels of serotonin will turn its head even in sleep if the oxygen getting to the brain is constricted.
This can happen when babies sleep on their stomachs. Without the ‘wake-up call’ from this hormone, the baby may suffocate without shifting position or waking.
What scientists refer to as the medullary serotoninergic system controls not only breathing and waking from sleep, but also blood pressure and body temperature. To this date researchers have not confirmed all the factors that may contribute to low serotonin levels. They are certain that sleeping face down, cigarette smoke and respiratory ailments are all probable culprits, usually with two or more of these factors involved.
Until a specific and effective test of infant serotonin levels can be found, parents can reduce the risk of SID by putting the baby to sleep on its back in a separate bed in their bedroom, not smoking, and breastfeeding.
February 12, 2010
Filed under: Baby health — Alan @ 3:52 am
The causes and contributing factors of the neural disorder now known as autism are still largely unknown, but a great deal of research is being carried out on many fronts. A recent study undertaken by researchers at the University of California found a correlation between the age of women giving birth and the incidence of autism in babies.
The findings, published in the medical journal Autism Research, prompted the conclusion that women over 40 are at much greater risk than those in their 20’s of having a baby with autistic symptoms.
The study involved following the medical history of almost five million children over a period of ten years from the date of birth, in this case the records of every birth in California from January 1990 to December 1999.
To identify cases of autism, the researchers used medical examinations called ESR or Early Start Report for children less than three years old, and CDER, or Client Development and Evaluation Report for ages three and over.
Within the entire group, specific data was recorded to establish the age, race and educational level of the parents as well as other factors such as the number of previous pregnancies and births and the type of insurance owned by the parents.
After the exclusion of children from multiple births and those with insufficient parental data, the study found 12,159 diagnosed cases of autism among the 4,935,776 children in the control group.
February 11, 2010
Filed under: Baby health — Alan @ 5:41 am
When four year old Bella Flint said that she felt ill a GP stated that a child was simply looking for attention after her baby sister arrived, however, her mother thought there was more to it than that, luckily for Bella.
Her mother, Carly Hornbuckle, said that her mother’s intuition drove her to head online to diagnose her symptoms because she had a feeling that the illness was more than just a childhood bug or the result of sibling rivalry.
Hornbuckle actions ended up saving her life because when she looked up Bella’s symptoms that included vomiting in the morning, weight loss, and listlessness she discovered that they were all signs of a brain tumour.
Once she discovered the diagnosis, she ran to another GP who agreed to test Bella, at which point it was discovered there was a tumour about the size of a golf ball in her brain.
It took an eight hour operation and Bella is now receiving chemotherapy for the next year, but the prognosis is positive.
Hornbuckle stated that she knew something was wrong because a mother knows her child.
Bella’s parents became concerned in France while on holiday when the child started vomiting after waking up. They noticed she was losing weight but the GP said that the child seemed to well overall for something serious to be wrong with her.
The tumour was finally found at the Leicester Royal Infirmary and diagnosed as medulloblastoma, which only affects about 80 children across the nation.
February 9, 2010
Filed under: Celebrity babies — Alan @ 7:24 am
Gordon Brown has never been known to cry even in front television cameras while talking about his daughter’s premature death. In 2002 he was seen with eyes filled with tears while watching 2002 footage of his joyful response to her birth.
He then went on to talk about the horror he felt when he learned she would not make it then facing up to the fact that ten days later she passed away due to complications from a brain hemorrhage.
The only other subject area that has been known to upset the otherwise reserved prime minister is talking about his son Fraser who at age three has cystic fibrosis.
Brown stated in an interview that aired Sunday with Piers Morgan that many times the couple asks themselves why them, but still attempt not to let negativity rule their lives. Also present at the interview was Brown’s wife Sarah whose eyes also reportedly welled up during the interview.
Aides promoted the interview in which Brown reveals his more sensitive side in order to help make the famously quiet and stolid prime minister more relatable to the people in the light of competition from Tory head David Cameron.
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