Month: December 2012

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Religious organizations win, lose in contraception mandate cases

brigitte

Two church-affiliated schools scored a victory and a Christian-owned chain store was handed a costly defeat this week in their separate ongoing legal battle against the Obama administration’s contraception mandate.

On Thursday, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld a lower court ruling that denied a request by arts and crafts chain store Hobby Lobby to temporarily block enforcement of the mandate. The denial could cost the company up to $1.3 million in daily fines if it doesn’t provide a controversial contraceptive drug through its employees’ insurance plan.

That ruling comes two days after the Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., reinstated the lawsuits filed by Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina andWheaton College in Illinois and ordered the government to make good on its promise to draft new rules that could resolve the legal standoff between church-owned schools and hospitals and the Obama administration.

The ruling “turned a page here by adding a new level of supervision to hold the government responsible for the promise it made,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents the two church-affiliated schools. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

New study shows how mitochondrial disease may be prevented

brigitte

A joint team of scientists from The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Laboratory and Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) has developed a technique that may prevent the inheritance of mitochondrial diseases in children. The study is published online today in Nature.

Dieter Egli, PhD, and Daniel Paull, PhD, of the NYSCF Laboratory with Mark Sauer, MD, and Michio Hirano, MD, of CUMC demonstrated how the nucleus of a cell can be successfully transferred between human egg cells. This landmark achievement carries significant implications for those children who have the potential to inherit mitochondrial diseases. Mitochondria are cellular organelles responsible for the maintenance and growth of a cell. They contain their own set of genes, passed from mother to child, and are inherited independently from the cell’s nucleus. Although mitochondrial DNA accounts for only 37 out of more than 20,000 genes in an individual, mutations to mitochondrial genes carry harmful effects.

Mitochondrial disorders, due to mutations in mitochondrial DNA, affect approximately 1 in 10,000 people, while nearly 1 in 200 individuals carries mutant mitochondrial DNA. Symptoms, manifesting most often in childhood, may lead to stunted growth, kidney disease, muscle weakness, neurological disorders, loss of vision and hearing, and respiratory problems, among others. Worldwide, a child is born with a mitochondrial disease approximately every 30 minutes, and there are currently no cures for these devastating diseases. “Through this study, we have shown that it should be possible to prevent the inheritance of mitochondrial disorders,” said Egli, PhD, co-author of the study and an Senior Researcher in the NYSCF Laboratory. “We hope that this technique can be advanced quickly toward the clinic where studies in humans can show how the use of this process could help to prevent mitochondrial disease.” In this study, the researchers removed the nucleus of an unfertilized egg cell and replaced it with the nucleus of another donor’s egg cell. The resultant egg cell contained the genome of the donor but not her mitochondrial DNA. The researchers demonstrated that the transfer did not have detectable adverse effects on the egg cell, a prerequisite for clinical translation. They achieved this by lowering the temperature of the egg before nuclear transfer, a novel technique. Previous studies report adverse consequences in approximately 50% of the egg cells. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Men With Lots of Brothers Are More Fertile, Have Faster Swimming Sperm

brigitte

Looking for Mr. Right to start a big family with? Science says you should start by counting how many brothers he has.

Scientists say that the more brothers a man has, the greater his baby-making potential, after discovering a link between the swimming speed of a man’s sperm with the number of male siblings in his family.

The latest findings, published in the Asian Journal of Andrology, add to a previous theory that parents with genes for good male fertility are more likely to have boys. If the theory is correct, it seems Americans have excellent male fertility genes. According to the latest report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more boys than girls are being born in the United States, and there were exactly 94,232 more male births than female births in the U.S. in 2004.

Researchers at the University of Sheffield compared the traveling speed of 500 men with their family make-up.

The study found that the greater number of brothers rather than sisters a man has, the faster his sperm, and faster sperm is associated with greater fertility. Researchers noted that having mostly brothers can also indicate that the man’s parents have strong male fertility genes and that they could have passed it on to him.

“The results are very surprising and could provide genetic insights into why some men are more fertile than others but at the moment have no clinical relevance to how we might manage and treat male infertility,” researcher Dr. Allan Pacey, of the University of Sheffield, said in a statement. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Menopause linked to higher brain aneurysm risk

brigitte

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — They sit silently in the heads of millions of Americans. They can burst without warning. Brain aneurysms rupture in about 30,000 people every year, killing or disabling many.

Women are at a higher risk for aneurysms than men. Now, researchers are taking a closer look at how a major change in a woman’s life could be to blame.

Sande Skinner thought she was having a stroke.

“The left side of my body got numb,” said Skinner. “It didn’t feel right.”

Skinner had a giant aneurysm right behind her right optic nerve. If ruptured, brain aneurysms can lead to stroke or death. Risk factors include smoking, high blood pressure and possibly lower estrogen levels caused by menopause. Two of the largest brain aneurysm trials in the world found most happen in menopausal women.

“Average age of rupture of all patients with aneurysms is age 52, which just so happens to be the average age of menopause,” said Dr. Dr. Michael Chen, a neurointerventionalist at Rush University Medical Center. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Et Tu, Pelvic Exams?

brigitte

First, let’s review. We’ve been getting a lot of updates to cancer screening tests lately.

Pap Smears, a screening test for cervical cancer, were recommended to be done annually, until a group of experts in prevention concluded that every three years was equally effective. Most medical groups, including the American Cancer Society, agree on this one.

Then there’s mammography. I think everyone knows the debate around that. Every year orevery other year? Starting at 40? or 50? The evidence points to every two years after age 50, although many doctors maintain younger and more often is better.

But this latest one — about pelvic exams — caught me by surprise. It turns out there’s really not a whole lot of evidence that doing an annual pelvic exam makes any difference to a healthy woman’s continuing good health. (Again, we’re stressing healthy women. Women having symptoms are definitely candidates for a pelvic exam). Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Global rates of infertility remain unchanged over past two decades

brigitte

In 2010, almost 50 million couples worldwide were unable to have a child after five years of trying. Infertility rates have hardly changed over the past 20 years, according to a study by international researchers published in this week’s PLOS Medicine.

In an analysis of 277 national surveys, the authors, led by Gretchen Stevens from the World Health Organization, estimated the levels and trends of infertility in 190 countries from 1990 to 2010. They found that in 2010, 1.9% of women aged 20 years who wanted to have children were unable to have their first live birth (primary infertility), and 10.5% of women who had previously given birth were unable to have another baby (secondary infertility)—a total of 48.5 million couples. The authors found that the levels of infertility were similar in 1990 and 2010, with only a slight overall decrease in primary infertility (0.1%, but with a more pronounced drop in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia) and a small increase in secondary infertility (0.4%). The authors found that primary infertility rates among women wanting to have children also varied by region, ranging from 1.5% in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2010, to 2.6% in North Africa and the Middle East. Furthermore, with a few exceptions, global and country patterns of secondary infertility were similar to those of primary infertility. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Hugh Jackman: Our Infertility Battle Was a ‘Difficult Time’

brigitte

He may be one of the most doting dads in Hollywood, but thepath to parenthood was a difficult one for Hugh Jackman.

Before the actor and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness welcomed Oscar Maximillian, 12, and Ava Eliot, 7, through adoption, they fought a long battle with infertility, undergoing IVF treatments only to have the resulting pregnancies end in miscarriages.

“It is a difficult time. The miscarriage thing — apparently it happens to one in three pregnancies — but it’s very, very rarely talked about,” Jackman, 44, said during a Tuesday appearance on Katie.

“It’s almost secretive. But it’s a good thing to talk about. It’s more common and it’s tough, there’s a grieving process you have to go through.”

Now the adoring dad of a son and daughter, the Les Miserables star says adoption was never a last resort; It has always been a part of the couple’s parenting plans.

“To be clear, Deb and I always wanted to adopt,” he explains. “We didn’t know where in the process that would happen, but biologically, obviously, we tried and it was not happening for us.” Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

IVF twin pregnancies riskier than singletons: study

brigitte

REUTERS – Having twins as a results of in vitro fertilization (IVF) carries higher risks of complications for both mother and babies than having two single babies from separate IVF procedures, according to a Swedish study.

The extra concerns that come with multiple births are nothing new. Btu even as many fertility clinics have stopped regularly transferring more than one embryo, debate has continued over whether having twins through IVF is really a bad thing for couples desperate for children.

“The neonatal and maternal outcomes were dramatically better for women undergoing two IVF singleton pregnancies compared with one IVF twin pregnancy after double-embryo transfer,” wrote lead researcher Antonina Sazonova in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

“These results support single-embryo transfer to minimize the risks associated with twin pregnancies,” added Sazonova of Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The researchers analyzed data from fresh and frozen embryo transfers done at Swedish IVF clinics between 2002 and 2006. Those records included 991 women who ultimately gave birth to twins after a double embryo transfer and 921 mothers with two children born through separate rounds of IVF. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Department of Justice: Put a hold on contraception suits

brigitte

There’s no reason to try legal challenges to the contraception mandate brought by religious employers who are now protected from it until HHS decides how it will try to accommodate them, government lawyers told federal appellate court judges Friday.

Arguing in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Department of Justice attorney Adam Jed said Health and Human Services will release a proposed rule on the contraception accommodation in the first three months of 2013 and finalize it by August before the safe-harbor protection expires. Since that rule is on the way, there is no cause for cases to move forward now, he said.

Two religious colleges, Wheaton and Belmont Abbey, are appealing lower-court rulings that dismissed their suits as premature because they are protected by their safe-harbor status.

But their attorney, Kyle Duncan, argued that the case should go forward because those provisions won’t block private lawsuits that could be brought as soon as Jan. 1 under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. He also said the contraception policy remains an affront to their First Amendment rights. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

I think of my egg donor every day

brigitte

In the last few years, the backdrop to egg donation has changed a lot. Since 2005, sperm and egg donors remain anonymous to the intended parents, but the child can now find out non-identifying information about its donor at 16, and more detailed information, including name and address, when it reaches 18. Although the numbers of egg donors didn’t collapse after this, as feared, fewer new donors registered and there has been a shortage as demand has increased – around 1,300 women every year in the UK are treated with donated eggs – with waiting lists of around a year at some clinics, which has resulted in many women and couples seeking treatment abroad. Earlier this year, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) introduced a £750 compensation fee to women who donate their eggs – a recognition of the invasive and time-consuming process – which has resulted in shorter waiting times at many clinics.  Read full article.