TODAY'S NEWS
Contents of this page
Contents of Englemed
by Lena Mengle
October 1998
When we in Englemed published our first collection of stories about childbirth and pregnancy back in March 1998 we'd just been through a spate of quirky and downright surprising reports about the whole business.
Our latest collection reflects far more the grim reality of childbirth. Firstly there is the struggle to get pregnant that many of us know about.
Then there are the agonies and dilemmas that medicine throws at us while a new life grows inside.
Finally there is the eternal question - what is best for my child? Often we know the answer, sometimes we don't and it seems nobody is in much hurry to tell us.
Back in March a lot of what we had to say was simply there to bring a warm smile to the face. There were findings about what the baby got up to in the warmth of the womb - quite a lot as many women suspect.
And there was news of unexpected health benefits from giving birth.
There were also warnings - but many of these would affect a minority of women. Whatever the risk of drinking coffee, its impact in reality is quite small.
Our latest reports directly affect far more people.
There has been a great deal recently about the process of getting pregnant. The latest advances are not as dramatic as the development of test-tube treatment but they are significant.
Drug treatments are improving, so is IVF itself although there is some controversy about recent breakthroughs.
And how doctors deal with an infertile person is a real problem. Just when we thought medical openness was the answer to everything, we are told it can cause damaging stress.
Oh, and forget that bottle of wine to help with conception. It only makes things worse, it seems.
Once you're pregnant it's far from all over. That is the bad news.
The question of testing for Down's Syndrome is one of the greatest miseries of pregnancy.
All too often the tests seem to happen too late and are far too imprecise. Understandably many women refuse to have them.
Too many simply do not understand the implications of going through the process - and do not have it explained properly.
Researchers have been busy trying to improve the tests. That is some consolation.
How many women know to check the labels on their vitamin supplements? Apparently it's worth the effort.
And to check the label on the powdered baby milk? That only serves to emphasise the advantages of breast milk.
But if you smoke you can wipe out those advantages, it seems. For what health report is complete without a warning about the perils of tobacco?
PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH - Steering a Safe Course - by Lena Mengle
SOME SURPRISING FACTS - by Lena Mengle (Childbirth & Pregnancy page 2)
Baby-feeding in test-tube
Cover-up for the stressed
Breast secrets revealed
Booze Blow to Fertility
DNA help for Down's
Breast Hazard for Smokers
ICSI two part
Test to beat Down's misery
Check the E-label!
Hormone help for childless
Your comments - add them to this page
Contents of Englemed
Title page of Englemed
October 9th 1998
Dramatic improvements have been achieved in the success of test-tube baby treatment by new "feeding" techniques, it was announced today.
The new techniques mean that laboratory-fertilised embryos are much more likely to survive in the womb.
In turn this reduces the risk of women having multiple pregnancies - because doctors have less need to place several embryos in the womb.
The new advances were announced at the annual conference of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine in San Francisco, USA.
Researchers discovered that embryos needed different foods at different stages of their development in the laboratory.
Researcher Dr David Gardner, of the Colorado Centre for Reproductive Medicine, said: "We gave the embryos a plate of nutrients and analyzed the remaining media after they were done eating.
"What we found was that one to three-day-old embryos have different nutritional needs than four to five-day-old embryos."
Contents of this page
Contents of Englemed
Title page of Englemed
September 13th 1998
Medical honesty is a bad policy for women seeking fertility treatment, a researcher claims today.
Giving women results of tests, which may be discouraging, reduces their fertility because it adds to their stress, the British Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Cardiff, Wales, was being told.
The finding confirms what has long been suspected - that stress can damage a woman's chances of getting pregnant.
But it also reverses the modern trend in medicine to believe that honesty and frankness is the best policy.
Dr Jacky Boivin, a psychologist at Cardiff University, studied 107 women undergoing test-tube baby treatment.
The women were asked to record their daily levels of stress and the medical advice they received from staff supervising their treatment.
The conclusion was that women who did not become pregnant had greater stress levels than the successful ones.
Dr Boivin is to report on a second study to delegates - this time concluding that women who have good sex are more likely to become pregnant than those who enjoy the experience less.
Contents of this page
Contents of Englemed
Title page of Englemed
August 28th 1998
A fatty acid found in breast milk may be vital to a child's development - but is not always included in formula milk, researchers have discovered.
The researchers from the University of Dundee, Scotland, UK, tested the effect of the fatty acid, LCPUFA, on the intelligence of more than 44 infants.
They claim that their results, published in The Lancet, show that the absence of the fatty acid in milk reduced the intelligence of the young children.
Roughly half the children were fed artificial milk without the acid and half with it.
At the age of ten months the infants were set a problem solving test.
At the extreme just two infants managed to solve the problem totally, both children who had been fed milk with LCPUFA.
They conclude: "Since higher problem-solving scores in infancy are related to higher childhood IQ scores, supplementation with LCPUFA may be important for the development of childhood intelligence."
Contents of this page
Contents of Englemed
Title page of Englemed
Booze Blow to Fertility
August 21st 1998
Drinking alcohol can make it hard for a woman to become pregnant, according to new findings.
A daily drink can halve the chance of conceiving, Danish researchers say.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, the researchers from the National University Hospital, Copenhagen, report the results of a study of 430 young Danish couples - all seeking to have their first child.
They found that women who had five drinks or less a week were twice as likely to conceive as those drinking ten or more.
The researchers, led by Dr Tina Kold Jensen, say that even five drinks a week appear to decrease the chances of becoming pregnant.
The researchers admit their findings are unexpected and call for further research. Up to now only heavy drinking has been linked to problems in getting pregnant.
Contents of this page
Contents of Englemed
Title page of Englemed
DNA help for Down's
July 3rd 1998
A new DNA test could spare pregnant women the agony of waiting to discover whether a baby has Down's syndrome.
The test successfully enables the condition to be diagnosed within 24 hours of an amniocentesis probe being used, according to The Lancet.
Current tests, which require cells to be cultured in laboratory conditions, take up to 15 days to produce results.
Since amniocentesis takes place at about 16 weeks of pregnancy, the delay means women having to make difficult choices at a very late stage.
Researchers from Birmingham, UK, tested the new method on more than 2,000 women and found it correctly identified 30 Down's syndrome babies and 2,053 as healthy.
But the new test is unlikely to replace totally the traditional laboratory methods - since they enable doctors to detect a range of chromosomal abnormalities apart from Down's Syndrome.
Researcher Loveena Verma said: "DNA-based identification of Down's syndrome is a rapid and reliable technique for prenatal diagnosis."
Contents of this page
Contents of Englemed
Title page of Englemed
Breast Hazard for Smokers
June 12th 1998
Breast may not be best for the babies of women who smoke, a new study has revealed.
Breast-fed babies of mothers who smoke absorb ten times as many tobacco-related chemicals as infants who are bottle-fed, researchers say.
The findings, reported in the American Journal of Public Health, come from a study of more than 330 families in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
They suggest that breast-fed babies of smokers may receive 80 times as much nicotine as babies of non-smokers.
The researchers examined levels of a chemical called cotinine, a by-product of nicotine, in the babies.
And they stressed their message was not that mothers should give up breast-feeding - but that they should stop smoking.
Researcher Dr Maria Mascola, of the Massachusetts General Hospital, said: "While we don't know for sure whether the compounds present in breast milk are related to any of the harmful health effects seen in some children of smoking women, this does stress how important it is to help mothers refrain from smoking both during pregnancy and while they are nursing."
Contents of this page
Contents of Englemed
Title page of Englemed
ICSI Two Part
May 22nd 1998
Researchers are in conflict about the safety of the latest test-tube baby treatment.
The astonishing techniques of the treatment, ICSI, involve injecting a single sperm into the heart of a human egg using a hair-thin needle.
In The Lancet, researchers from Sydney, Australia, report on a study of nearly 90 ICSI children aged one year old.
They claim their findings show a risk that ICSI babies may face delays in development.
But their findings are contradicted by a report from Belgium, the country where ICSI originated.
Their study of more than 200 ICSI children at the age of two found no indication of developmental problems.
Meanwhile the journal carries a commentary criticising the widespread introduction of the technique which has happened without the rigorous testing involved in drug trials.
Clinics say that ICSI dramatically improves the success rate of test-tube treatments - and spares would-be parents the repeated and expensive bills involved in pursuing unsuccessful techniques.
Contents of this page
Contents of Englemed
Title page of Englemed
Test to beat Down's misery
April 3rd 1998
A new test could help spare parents the misery of discovering late in pregnancy that a baby has Down Syndrome.
The new test, which involves taking a simple blood test from the mother, works with 60 per cent accuracy, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers set out to find ways of diagnosing Down Syndrome within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.
They report that searching for two chemicals, human chorionic gonadotropin free beta subunit and pregnancy associated protein A, can achieve this with a high degree of accuracy.
The results come from a study of more than 4,000 pregnant women by researchers at the Foundation for Blood Research in Maine, USA.
A total of 48 women were pregnant with Down Syndrome babies. Down Syndrome testing is a source of agony to women since once a test is confirm positive parents have to choose between having an abortion or pressing ahead and having a baby.
Contents of this page
Contents of Englemed
Title page of Englemed
Check the E-label!
March 27th 1998
Pregnant women should take the natural form of vitamin E and not a synthetic form, researchers revealed today.
The natural vitamin finds its way far more efficiently to the unborn baby than the synthetic version, according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The vitamin is vital in helping protect babies against anaemia.
Researchers from East Tennesse State University, USA, studied 15 mothers who were given one or other of the vitamin E forms.
They found that 3.5 times as much natural vitamin found its way to the baby than did the artificial kind.
Researcher Prof Robert Acuff said: "Prenatal vitamins are being made with the wrong vitamin E.
"Pregnant women, or women thinking about getting pregnant, should ask their physicians to prescribe a prenatal supplement with the natural form of vitamin E."
The two vitamins are distinguished on food labelling by a single letter.
The natural vitamin is d-alpha-tocopherol, the synthetic version dl-alpha-tocopherol.
The vitamin is believed to play a key role in the health of a baby's red blood cells.
Contents of this page
Contents of Englemed
Title page of Englemed
Hormone help for childless
March 13th 1998
A hormone treatment has been discovered that could combat infertility without leading to multiple pregnancies, it was revealed today.
The conference of the Society for Gynecological Investigation, held in Atlanta, USA, heard that a hormone called lutenizing hormone, LH, helped eggs to grow.
Fertility centres usually use a hormone called follicle stimulating hormone, FSH, to achieve this but this often results in multiple births.
Researchers from The University of Buffalo, USA, told how they had tested a combination of LH and FSH on 24 women.
New treatments will be possible as a result of this discovery because both hormones can be made in the laboratory.
Researcher Dr Michael Sullivan said: "Nobody has looked at this before, because it wasn't possible until the development of the recombinant form of the two hormones, which happened very recently.
"The finding is very preliminary, but it is promising."
Contents of this page
Contents of Englemed
Title page of Englemed
