Body

New research findings may soon help doctors personalize preterm birth prevention treatments by identifying which women at higher risk for preterm birth will be helped by progesterone injections.

Injections of one type of progesterone, a synthetic form of a hormone naturally produced during pregnancy, have been shown to reduce the risk of recurrent preterm births by about a third.

In a study to be presented on Feb. 7 at 2:15 p.m. CST, at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting™, in New Orleans, researchers will report that patients delivered at home by midwives had a roughly four times higher risk of neonatal deaths than babies delivered in the hospital by midwives. The increased neonatal mortality risk is associated with the location of a planned birth, rather than the credentials of the person delivering the baby.

In a study to be presented on Feb. 7 at 2:45 p.m. CST, at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting™, in New Orleans, researchers will report that obesity during pregnancy is an independent risk factor for long-term cardiovascular morbidity, and these complications tend to occur at a younger age. Researchers concluded that obese pregnant patients might benefit from cardiovascular risk screening that could lead to early detection and secondary prevention of cardiovascular morbidity.

New research shows that babies not only pick up on their mother's stress, they also show corresponding physiological changes.

"Our research shows that infants 'catch' and embody the physiological residue of their mothers' stressful experiences," says lead researcher Sara Waters, postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, San Francisco.

The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

African American youth who report experiencing frequent discrimination during adolescence are at risk for developing heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke in later years, according to a new study.

The study also found that emotional support from parents and peers can protect African American youth from stress-related damage to their bodies and health.

The study, by researchers at the University of Georgia and Emory University, appears in the journal Child Development.

Black children are twice as likely as white children to be readmitted to the hospital for asthma – a disparity due in large part to a greater burden of financial and social hardships, according to a new study.

Researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center found that 23 percent of black children were readmitted within a year, while 11 percent of other children in the study, most of whom were white, were readmitted within a year. Nearly 19 percent of all children were readmitted to the hospital within 12 months.

A new study may alleviate concerns that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine leads to either the initiation of sex or unsafe sexual behaviors among teenage girls and young women.

The February issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR®) focuses on a variety of issues relating to clinical practice, practice management, health services and policy, and radiology education and training.

Articles include:

ANN ARBOR—In one of the first studies to show a significant association between BPA and cancer development, University of Michigan School of Public Health researchers have found liver tumors in mice exposed to the chemical via their mothers during gestation and nursing.

WASHINGTON - Single-sex education does not educate girls and boys any better than coed schools, according to research published by the American Psychological Association analyzing 184 studies of more than 1.6 million students from around the world. The findings are published online Feb. 3 in the APA journal Psychological Bulletin.

A large body of literature has shown that genetically-modified plants that produce proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to protect themselves from insect pests have little to no effect on a wide range of nontarget insects. However, concerns about Bt crops still exist. Now two new studies using more exacting methods show that Bt crops have no negative effects on two beneficial insect predators or on a beneficial, entomopathogenic nematode.

A new study published in The Permanente Journal (Vol. 18, No.1) on health showed the introduction of the Transcendental Meditation® technique substantially decreased teacher stress and burnout.

Research indicates that stress and burnout are pervasive problems among employees, with teachers being especially vulnerable to feeling frequent stress from their jobs. Burnout, a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and job dissatisfaction, has been found to contribute to lower teacher classroom performance and higher absenteeism and job turnover rates.

Previous studies from China, Spain, and the United States on genetically modified (GM) rice, cotton, and maize have concluded that the biodiversity of insects and related arthropods in GM crop fields was essentially the same as that among conventional crops. Now a new study from South Africa shows similar results.

The study is described in an article called "Comparative Diversity of Arthropods on Bt Maize and Non-Bt Maize in two Different Cropping Systems in South Africa," which appears in the February 2014 issue of Environmental Entomology.

Vitamin C and E supplements may blunt the improvement of muscular endurance – by disrupting cellular adaptions in exercised muscles – suggests a new study published today [3 February] in The Journal of Physiology.

As vitamin C and E supplements are widely used, understanding if they interfere with cellular and physiological adaptations to exercise is of interest to people exercising for health purposes as well as to athletes.

Dr Gøran Paulsen, who led the study at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, explains:

This news release is available in Spanish, French, and Arabic.

Geneva, 3 February 2014. Governments could slow – and even reverse – the growing epidemic of obesity by taking measures to counter fast food consumption, according to a study published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization today.