The sabbatical year is also the time for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education to rewrite curriculum for each medical specialty, including the training young clinicians receive in reproductive health.
Tag: reproductive health
National Infertility Awareness Week: Infertility Myths Debunked
This week is National Infertility Awareness Week, a time of year devoted to raising awareness about reproductive health and infertility. Infertility affects one in eight couples or 7.3 million people in the U.S. Nearly 12% of women of reproductive age experience difficulty having a baby and approximately 11.5% of Black women report infertility compared to 7% of White women.
IVF does not boost cancer risk, study finds
Women getting fertility treatments can be reassured that in vitro fertilization (IVF) does not increase their risk of breast and gynecological cancers, according to a U.S. study of Israeli women.
“The findings were fairly reassuring. Nothing was significantly elevated,” said lead author Louise Brinton, chief of the Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch at the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Maryland.
Ovulation-stimulating drugs or puncturing of the ovaries to retrieve eggs can be part of IVF treatments, procedures that researchers have suspected may increase women’s risk of cancer. Indeed, previous studies did link IVF early in life to heightened risks of breast cancer and borderline ovarian tumors.
But other studies have found little connection between fertility treatments and cancer.
The association has been difficult to untangle, experts say, in part because it’s hard to know whether unmeasured factors not realized to IVF may affect the risk of cancer in women who have trouble conceiving. In addition, so far there haven’t been a lot of women who developed cancer after fertility treatment included in studies. Read full article.
Today, Few Public Family Planning Centers Accept Insurance
Most women can expect to get contraceptives without paying out of pocket for them thanks to the federal Affordable Care Act. Women who are young or those who are poor and rely on publicly funded family planning centers for reproductive health services are covered, too.But there’s a catch.
Too much TV could damage sperm production
Semen quality is a much-discussed subject among scientists these days. Data suggests sperm concentration has been declining in Western countries over the past couple of decades – and reasons for the decline are debatable.
The lead author of a new study on the subject, Audrey Gaskins, has been studying the effects of diet and exercise on semen for several years as a doctoral candidate at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her latest research shows a lack of physical activity – and too much time in front of the television – may impact sperm count and concentration.
Previous studies have shown a link between physical activity and decreased levels of oxidative stress, Gaskins says. “Oxidative stress” is stress placed on the body as it tries to get rid of free radicals or repair the damage caused by them. Exercise may protect certain male cells from oxidative damage, Gaskins says, leading to increased sperm concentration. Read full article.
Abusive partners can sabotage contraception
While researchers don’t know exactly how common it is, the nation’s leading group of obstetricians and gynecologists says women should be screened for ‘reproductive coercion.’
When a husband hides a wife’s birth control pills or a boyfriend takes off a condom in the middle of sex in hopes of getting an unwilling girlfriend pregnant, that’s a form of abuse called reproductive coercion.
While researchers don’t know exactly how common such coercion is, it’s common enough – especially among women who are abused by their partners in other ways – that health care providers should screen women for signs at regular check-ups and pregnancy visits, says the nation’s leading group of obstetricians and gynecologists.
“We want to make sure that health care providers are aware that this is something that does go on and that it’s a form of abuse,” says Veronica Gillispie, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Ochsner Health System, New Orleans, and a member of the committee that wrote the opinion for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. It’s published in the February issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, out today. Read full article.
Pap Test Could Help Find Cancers of Uterus and Ovaries
The Pap test, which has prevented countless deaths from cervical cancer, may eventually help to detect cancers of the uterus and ovaries as well, a new study suggests.
For the first time, researchers have found genetic material from uterine or ovarian cancers in Pap smears, meaning that it may become possible to detect three diseases with just one routine test.
But the research is early, years away from being used in medical practice, and there are caveats. The women studied were already known to havecancer, and while the Pap test found 100 percent of the uterine cancers, it detected only 41 percent of the ovarian cancers. And the approach has not yet been tried in women who appear healthy, to determine whether it can find early signs of uterine or ovarian cancer. Read full article.
Make-up Triggers Early Menopause
CHEMICALS found in make-up, hairspray and food packaging are causing women to hit menopause early, researchers warn. Those exposed to high doses have been found to go through the change almost two and a half years before other women.
And in some cases, these chemicals may be causing women to stop having periods 15 years too soon, say scientists. Read full article.
Mice Experiment May Point to New Ways to Protect Female Fertility
(Reuters) – Egg cells can repair themselves from damage caused by radiation far better than doctors ever thought, a finding researchers say gives fresh hope in protecting women undergoing cancer therapy from infertility.
Although the experiments have only been in mice, researchers believe they have relevance for female cancer patients and women who suffer premature menopause, a condition that puts them at risk of early infertility, osteoporosis and heart disease.
In a paper to be published in the November 9 issue of the journal Molecular Cell, scientists in Australia found that egg cells, or oocytes, are killed not by radiation, but by two proteins — puma and noxa — which snap into action when they detect DNA damage to egg cells. Read full article.
Cell Death Discovery Suggests New Ways to Protect Female Fertility
Melbourne researchers have identified a new way of protecting female fertility, offering hope to women whose fertility may be compromised by the side-effects of cancer therapy or by premature menopause.
The researchers, from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Monash University and Prince Henry’s Institute of Medical Research, made the discovery while investigating how egg cells die.
They found that two specific proteins, called PUMA and NOXA, cause the death of egg cells in the ovaries. The finding may lead to new strategies that protect women’s fertility by blocking the activity of these two proteins. Read full article.