March 26, 2010
Filed under: Baby public health — Alan @ 5:46 am
After the deaths of 14 children health authorities in the United States are warning parents about the dangers that using baby slings can bring with them.
The slings were made popular by a good number of ‘yummy mummies’ and celebrities.
The reason that slings are becoming used more is because they are said to help strengthen the bond between a mother and her child.
The US health authorities warn that suffocation is a potential danger because babies may get their noses and mouth buried in the material and do not have strong enough neck muscles to free themselves. To top off the problem, since the sling pushes the baby into a curled foetal position, the airways are restricted since the chin becomes bent towards the baby’s chest.
Celebrities including Nicole Kidman and Brad Pitt have endorsed swings because they allow parents to have their hands free while still holding their baby close to their body. They also are perceived as a very natural way to hold a baby since the common belief is that when a child can hear their parent’s heartbeat they feel much more secure.
On the flip side, the US has launched an investigation into the slings, which found that there were 14 deaths from the slings, 12 of which were babies that were not even yet four months old. There were also three additional deaths from sling use in 2009. With these facts in mind, the US Government stated that children under 16 weeks should not be placed in slings.
Filed under: Celebrity babies — Alan @ 5:42 am
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, stated that he is quite excited to become a father again this September, which is the month that his wife Samantha is due. The Cameron’s already have two children but their child Ivan passed away last year.
Cameron admitted that the timing is not ideal given that the election is looming, but that they are overjoyed to have another child after Ivan died. Ivan passed away in February 2009 from complications associated with his epilepsy and cerebral palsy. The couple’s other two children, Nancy and Arthur, are six and four respectively.
The conservative leader also took the time to thank reporters who had sent him text messages congratulating him on Sam’s pregnancy and referenced the cute word plays that have been popping up in many headlines such as ‘Sam’s having a babycam.’
He stated that he had no idea that so many words could be rhymed with SamCam.
After her pregnancy was announced, Mrs. Cameron returned home to the waiting media and told them that she was delighted, as one would think. She is the creative director of Smythson, the luxury stationers, and spoke live on television for the first time at the beginning of March.
In the televised interview she spoke warmly about her husband and her family’s home life. She also stated that she was ready to get her husband ready to compete in the general election campaign.
March 18, 2010
Filed under: Celebrity babies — Alan @ 3:50 am
Two famous cellists are planning a family. Julian Lloyd Webber, renowned for his virtuoso performances in concerts and recordings with his Barjansky Stradivarius cello, married Jiaxin Cheng, another noted cellist, last year. The two met at a concert in New Zealand a few years ago and solidified the relationship later in London.
Julian and Jiaxin caught the world premiere of “Love Never Dies”, the much-acclaimed new musical sequel to “Phantom of the Opera”, conceived by Julian’s older brother Andrew Lloyd Webber. The brothers have both been much in the spotlight during their respective careers, but Julian is making even more news in some circles.
The marriage of Julian (59) to Jiaxin (35) is his fourth, and Jiaxin has told reporters that though it might present a challenge to her husband’s career, she wants to have children, and as soon as possible.
Julian was first married to a journalist named Celia Ballantyne in 1974, second to an exiled princess from Afghan, Zohra Ghazi, and third to Kheira Bourahla. Friends of the couple believe that the fourth time may be the charm.
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 3:06 am
The Bridge Centre fertility clinic in London has teamed up with the Genetics and IVF Institute in the U.S. to offer more British women a chance to get pregnant. The basis for the cooperative move is to provide healthy eggs from female donors in the U.S. to women in the U.K. To promote this alliance, an egg is being raffled in London, with the winner to receive £13,000 in free treatments in the U.S. provided by GIVF.
Under present law in Britain it is illegal to sell human eggs for profit; the maximum allowed for expenses to donors is £250. In contrast, donors in the U.S. can receive up to $10,000 (£6,600) for a single egg. One result of this these policies is that more women in the U.S. are willing to donate eggs, and the joint venture circumvents British law by offering treatments in the U.S. to recipients of eggs from U.S. donors.
Egg donors are rigorously screened for health, stability and intellectual capacity, among other characteristics, and the actual process of donating an egg or eggs is not easy. It involves taking drugs to increase ovarian production, and has been described as a long and painful procedure, with potential harmful results to the donor’s health and future fertility.
Critics of the programme claim that it is taking advantage of donors’ financial need, and that most of the U.S. donors (all graduates or students at American universities) are motivated by the money they are paid. A spokesman for the Bridge Centre said that the decision to raffle an egg is one that was made by the Americans.
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 3:03 am
The risk of stillbirth is increased in women who undergo fertility treatments, specifically IVF or ICSI.
However, whether the increased risk is due to the fertility treatments is still under investigation.
A study conducted by scientists at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark indicated that the risk of stillbirth is four times higher after fertilization by IVF and ICSI than with other fertility treatments or ‘natural’ childbirth. Based on their study of 20,000 pregnancies between 1989 and 2006, researchers found a risk factor of 4.3 per thousand births overall, but that factor increased to 16.2 per thousand among women who had received either IVF or ICSI treatments.
The leader of the Danish study, Dr. Kirsten Wisborg, noted that they also found results to be similar in circumstances where the couple was fertile or just took longer to conceive, or after other fertility treatments. This led to the suggestion that some aspect of IVF and ICSI technology or another unknown factor may be the cause of increased risk.
While the risk of stillbirth is relatively very low, researchers agree that much more study is needed to determine the actual causes and whether they are related to specific methods of fertilization or to other physiological variations in the individuals.
The idea that infertility alone may not be the contributing factor in the higher risk category is one that interests other researchers very much, and will hopefully lead to more conclusive findings in further studies.
March 12, 2010
Filed under: Premature babies — Alan @ 4:38 am
A new study suggests that premature babies may have better survival rates if a technique that in effect ‘washes out’ their brains when severely ill is used.
One of the highest complications associated with premature babies is bleeding in the brain because it can easily lead to either brain damage or death. However, a new technique that drains out the blood while replacing it with new fluid was shown to significantly reduce the risk by a Bristol University study.
The technique is theorized to help improve the survival chances of around 100 babies every year.
It takes a few days to complete the technique in full and close monitoring of the pressure in the baby’s brain must be conducted according to researchers who have found the results to be encouraging.
The new treatment would only be practiced on babies that have large haemorrhages which cause the head and brain to expand; which is a condition formally known in the medical community as hydrocephalus.
The usual treatment of such a condition involves inserting needles into the spine or head to remove the fluid repeatedly over a period of months before finally shunt is placed into the baby to drain the fluid out through the abdomen.
Out of the 39 babies that received the new technique, called Drift, at the age of two 54% had died or were disabled compared to the 71% who had died or become seriously disabled using the usual treatment of the condition.
Filed under: Premature babies — Alan @ 4:35 am
In June of 2009 doctors dubbed a small newborn who weighed just a little over 9.7 ounces and measured less than a sheet of A-4 paper length wise ‘Tom Thumb’ after his birth that came 15 weeks prematurely at the Gottingen, Germany University of Medicine.
After his birth, the baby was placed in an incubator, fed through feeding tubes, hooked up to a heart monitor, breathing tubes, other electronic monitors, and a catheter for every hour of the day. Doctors feared that the child would soon face organ failure or cerebral haemorrhage.
Finally the baby was labelled stable once he reached the weight of 8.2lbs in December and now after nine months since his birth doctors are able to allow its parent’s to take it home deciding that the boy will now be able to survive on his own.
Gottingen hospital officials stated that after they researched all the records of premature births globally they were not able to find a viable birth rate of any other boy at the same weight or lower. There were three girls, including one from the US that weighed in at 244 grams, that was able to survive. The smallest boy on the books that survived weighed in at 10.4 ounces.
A premature birth expert, Dr. Stephan Seeliger, stated that he spoke to the parents at length before the caesarean birth about whether they should take the chance or not and at this point he is very glad that they decided to go for it.
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.
