336 Results for search "Pregnancy".
MONDAY, Nov. 25, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Chronic health problems like high blood pressure, gestational diabetes and obesity have fueled a troubling rise in maternal health issues and birth complications in Illinois, a new study finds.
"These birth outcomes are worsening for all...
Rates of postpartum depression have more than doubled in little over a decade among American women, a new analysis shows.
While about 1 in every 10 new moms (9.4%) suffered postpartum depression in 2010, that number rose to almost 1 in every 5 (19%) by 2021, report a team from Kaiser Permanente Southern California.
Why the steep rise? Better detection and reporting could be playing...
Women who won't leave the house without makeup or a spritz of hairspray may want to think twice about those habits when they're pregnant or breastfeeding.
New research links these and other personal care products, including hair dyes, fragrances, lotions, moisturizers and nail polishes to higher levels of so-called PFAS "forever chemicals" that are harmful to health.
Researche...
In the wake of Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election, retailers report that online sales of emergency contraceptives have soared.
The spike in purchases of what is also known as the morning-after pill or Plan B suggests women worry the incoming administration might soon limit their access to emergency contraception, Monica C...
One piece left out of the abortion debate is the high transportation and medical bills facing women forced to leave their state to obtain the procedure.
A new study is the first to give hard numbers on those concerns.
It finds that, even before the fall of Roe v. Wade, 65% of women who traveled to another state to undergo abortion incurred "catastrophic" bills causing them...
More than 1 in 5 Americans likely suffer from long COVID, a new AI-assisted review has found.
The analysis suggests that nearly 23% of U.S. adults experience the symptoms of long COVID, according to results published Nov. 8 in the journal Med.
That’s much higher than the 7% prevalence of long COVID that’s ...
Abortion pills are safe and effective even very early in a pregnancy, a new study finds.
Clinics and hospitals tend to defer medication abortions until a woman’s pregnancy is confirmed using ultrasound, researchers said.
But abortion pills can be safely taken prior to the sixth week of pregnancy, researchers reported Nov. 6 in the
Women who take vitamin D supplements during a pregnancy may be giving their kids the legacy of stronger bones, new British research suggests.
Children whose moms took vitamin D supplements when pregnant had stronger, denser bones at the age of 7 compared to the kids of women who didn't, a study from the University of Southampton shows.
It's an head start on bone health that might l...
Women who are pregnant but who also have the ovarian cyst disorder polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are at higher odds of giving birth to an underweight baby, new Norwegian research shows.
The risk rises even higher if the woman with PCOS is also obese, the study found.
“In women of n...
Although numerous studies have shown that marijuana use during pregnancy may harm both the fetus and a mom-to-be, almost 6% of women responding to a recent survey said they used weed while pregnant.
That's more than one in every 20 pregnancies, noted a team from the University of Georgia (UGA). Many of the women interviewed viewed marijuana as harmless, and it's long been turned to as mea...
Smoking marijuana during pregnancy may quell your morning sickness, but it could also harm your child’s development, a new study warns.
Cannabis exposure in the womb is associated in early childhood with poorer thinking skills, researchers reported Oct. 28 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
These kids also have behavioral problems like impulse control, poor attention an...
New research offers some comfort to pregnant women who become ill with COVID: Brain development doesn’t appear to be impaired in children exposed to the virus while in the womb.
There’s no significant difference in development at one year, a year and a half and two years after birth betwe...
Experiments in sheep are hinting that doses of caffeine given to women in pregnancy, as well as their newborns after birth, could prevent cerebral palsy.
Cerebral palsy is a disabling condition often caused by asphyxia -- reductions in oxygen supply -- around the time of birth. Asphyxia can cause other neurodevelopmental disorders, as well.
Researcher
The United States experienced a small but significant rise in infant deaths in the months following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision overturned Roe v. Wade, a new study shows.
The Dobbs ruling, handed down in July of 2022, led to outright bans on abortion in 14 states and tighter restrictions in eight others.
According to researchers, forcing women to carry "frail fetuses" to term ...
A routine blood test can identify women in labor who are at risk for preeclampsia, a high-blood pressure condition that’s a leading cause of maternal death, a new study finds.
Doctors can predict a woman’s risk of developing preeclampsia by looking at her levels of two blood proteins -- fi...
Studies in mice have shown that the fungal toxin zearalenone can mimic estrogen, and it might hamper reproduction.
It's not yet clear if the "mycoestrogen" compound can do the same in women. However, a new study finds that nearly all pregnant women ingest zearalenone as part of their daily die...
Some men might have damaged sperm that will increase the risk of pregnancy complications and health problems in newborns, a new study finds.
DNA defects in sperm can double the risk of preeclampsia, a dangerous pregnancy complication involving high blood pressur...
A child’s risk of asthma can be cut by nearly half if their mother regularly works out while expecting, a new study says.
Exercising three or more times a week while pregnant reduces a child’s risk of asthma by about 46%, researchers reported Oct. 9 in the journal Med.
This level of protection...
More than a third of women don’t know they are pregnant in time to meet the six-week abortion ban active in four U.S. states, a new study finds.
About 37% of women who got an abortion in 2021 and 2022 discovered they were pregnant at six weeks or later, according to findings from the sexual and...
Hot weather can be more than just uncomfortable and annoying: New research finds it can impact an infant’s development both before and after birth.
Babies are more likely to be delivered at low birth weight as an expecting mom’s average daily heat stress increases during the first trimester, researchers found.
What’s more, growing infants regularly exposed to heat ...
Over the past decade, rates of preterm birth in the United States jumped more than 10%, a new study of more than 5 million births shows.
The rise dovetailed with an increase in some factors that make an early delivery more likely, including rates of diabetes, sexually transmitted infections and mental health ...
Four out of five pregnant women will become deficient in an essential nutrient, iron, by their third trimester, a new study finds.
The researchers and other experts are now advocating that iron levels be routinely checked during a pregnancy for the safety of a mother and her baby.
Right now, guidelines from the
If a woman is already in a "prediabetic" state in her teen or college years, her odds for a serious complication of pregnancy later in life rises, new research shows.
Ignoring prediabetes in teenagers "may represent a missed opportunity to avert pregnancy-related complications" later, said study lead author Katharine McCarthy
Pregnant women covered by Medicaid are less likely to get an ultrasound exam that can diagnose heart defects in a fetus, a new study finds.
“The 20-week ultrasound is hugely important in detecting birth defects because it involves assessment of the baby’s major organs. All pregnant people must know that this test should not be missed,” said lead researcher
Surrogate moms have a higher risk of pregnancy complications than other pregnant women, a new study finds.
About 8% of surrogate mothers developed a severe complication like high blood pressure or serious bleeding during delivery, Canadian researchers ...
Kids born during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic appear to have no higher risk of autism, even if they were exposed to COVID in the womb, a new study finds.
The study offers reassurance to doctors and parents who’ve been worried about the developmental health of children born during the...
With implications for research around postpartum depression and other health issues, scientists have tracked the changes pregnancy brings to the female brain.
These changes weren't subtle: Big shifts in what's known as the brain's "white matter" versus "gray matter" were observed, according to a team from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).
“The maternal brain...
Florida’s six-week abortion ban caused the state’s abortion rate to drop dramatically, new research shows.
Abortions in Florida dropped to an estimated 5,630 in May and 5,200 in June, a 30% and 35% decrease from the average between January and March, data released Thursday shows.
“Our data pa...
As fears of the consequences of an unintended pregnancy rose after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, rates of surgical sterilization rose in those states most affected by the decision, new research shows.
Rates of tubal sterilization -- tying, cutting or removing the fallopian tubes -- rose by an average 3% per month in states where abortion became illegal after the Supreme Court ruling...
In the two years since the March of Dimes' last report on the state of U.S. maternity care, more than 100 hospitals nationwide have shuttered their obstetric units, leaving more new moms with literally "Nowhere to Go" for care.
The March of Dimes' 2024 report, titled "Nowhere to Go: Maternity Care Deserts Across the U.S....
Having asthma appears linked to raised odds for miscarriage and troubles with fertility among women, new Danish research shows.
“We found that women fulfilling the definition of asthma had a higher rate of fetal loss and an increased use of fertility treatment. The more severe the asthma and the more f...
PFAS “forever chemicals” could cause pregnant women to experience long-term weight gain, increasing their risk of obesity in middle age, a new study warns.
Women with higher levels of PFAS in their blood during early pregnancy weighed more at the age of 50 than those with low levels, resear...
States with the most severe abortion restrictions are the least likely to offer support to struggling families, a new study has found.
Anti-abortion states tend to have assistance programs that exclude many families on the fringes, because participants are required to be poorer to qualify, researchers found.
These states also are less likely to have family-friendly policies like pai...
An AI-enhanced digital stethoscope can help doctors detect a potentially deadly form of heart failure that can occur late in pregnancy, a new clinical trial reports.
The AI-driven stethoscope was 12 times more likely than traditional methods to spot heart pump weakness tied to peripartum cardiomyopathy, an uncommon form of
Ketamine is becoming a popular depression drug, but doctors aren’t keeping in mind the danger it can pose to a pregnancy, a new study warns.
Ketamine can be very harmful to a developing fetus and should not be used during pregnancy, researchers said.
But only 20% of keta...
Breastfeeding helps women shed those extra pounds of "pregnancy weight," a new study finds, and the effect is even more pronounced for moms who were overweight before their pregnancy.
Among women who exclusively breastfed their baby during its first year, women who were normal weight prior to pregnancy lost weight, but still retained about three extra pounds of their pregnancy weight, re...
Women are becoming pregnant after having their tubes tied, even though the procedure is considered a “permanent” form of birth control, a new study warns.
Between 3% and 5% of U.S. women who underwent tubal ligation later reported an unplanned pregnancy, according to findings published...
Just a daily cigarette or two before or during pregnancy endangers the health of newborns, a new study warns.
Infants are 16% more likely to suffer major health issues following delivery if their mothers engaged in “light smoking” of one or two cigarettes a day prior to getting pregnant, researchers found.
Those newborns also have a 13% higher risk of landing in neonatal...
Uterine transplants are relatively rare and recent -- the first was performed in 2011, and to date a little more than 100 transplants have been conducted worldwide.
However, a new study finds that these procedures are often successful, leading to pregnancies and live births in 14 out of the 20 patients assessed.
"A successfully transplanted uterus is capable of functioning at least ...
Chemicals commonly found in sunscreen, makeup and other personal care products could be putting pregnancies at risk, a new study warns.
Phenols and parabens in these products increase a pregnant woman's risk of high blood pressure by 57%, particularly at 24 to 28 weeks of gestation, researchers reported Aug. 14 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
"We found che...
Parvovirus B19, a seasonal respiratory virus that subsided during the pandemic, is making a comeback, U.S. health officials warned Tuesday.
In a health alert issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency said it has received reports of higher test positivity rates in recent months: The proportion o...
Not all babies born prematurely will suffer long-term developmental problems, a new study finds.
Preemies tend to fall into three risk categories, with about one in five (20%) scoring above average on standard cognitive tests, researchers reported Aug. 13 in the journal Child Development...
Pregnant women and new moms have better access to treatment for mood disorders, thanks to Obamacare, a new study finds.
More women received treatment for their pregnancy-related depression or anxiety after the Affordable Care Act (ACA) went into effect in 2014, research...
In an historic move, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday banned the use of a pesticide that can harm fetuses.
Known as dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate (DCPA or Dacthal), the weedkiller is used on a variety of crops, including broccoli, onions, kale, Brussels sprouts and cabbage.
However, when a pregnant woman is exposed to the chemical, it can alter fetal thyroid hormon...
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 7, 2024 (HeathDay News) -- Researchers are gleaning important insights into miscarriages in women from an longtime four-legged friend: horses.
It shouldn't come as a surprise, since female horses have long pregnancies (11 months) and embryos of both species grow at similar rates, said a team overseen by
Women who develop subclinical thyroid issues during pregnancy, meaning symptoms haven't surfaced, could face real thyroid trouble within five years, a new study finds.
Pregnant women who were diagnosed with subclinical hypothyroidism, pointing to an under-active gland, before 21 weeks of gestation had four times the odds of developing symptomatic hypothyroidism later, a team at University...
It's a question many women may ask themselves during pregnancy: Will an occasional glass of wine harm the baby?
While the latest research shows the answer is definitely yes for large quantities of alcohol or binge drinking, the answer is less clear for small amounts, although any alcohol consumption carries some risk, said Vidya...
Having a mom with type 1 diabetes might provide long-term protection against the condition in children, a new review finds.
This protective effect is suggested by that fact that a child is almost twice as likely to develop type 1 diabetes if their father has the condition th...
For the first time in two decades, the infant mortality rate in the United States has risen, new government data shows.
In a report released Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers found that more than 20,500 babies died in 2022 before the age of 1. Overall, there were 5.6 ...
There's a slight but significant rise in dangerous obstetric complications for pregnant women who use marijuana, new research shows.
Data from almost 317,000 pregnancies in women in California found those who used the drug had higher odds for gestational hypertension, preeclampsia, weight gain that goes beyond recommended levels and a condition known as placental abruption (when the plac...