Health Minister invites diaspora to join in developing healthcare – Indian Health Minister Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss has called for public-private partnership in health sector to meet the gap between supply and demand.
Timing is Everything When it Comes to Childhood Asthma. There is a relationship between childhood asthma with the winter season after birth. – Children who are born four months before the peak of cold and flu season have a greater risk of developing childhood asthma than children born at any other time of year, according to new research from Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
National Birth Defects Prevention Study Shows Assisted Reproductive Technology is Associated with an Increased Risk of Certain Birth Defects – Infants conceived with Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) are two to four times more likely to have certain types of birth defects than children conceived naturally, according to a study by the CDC.
County-level autism prevalence rates and counts among school-aged children were positively associated with a county’s mean annual precipitation. – Children living in counties with higher levels of annual precipitation appear more likely to have higher prevalence rates of autism, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. The results raise the possibility that an environmental trigger for autism may be associated with precipitation and may affect genetically vulnerable children.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study finds 3 million u.s. children have food or digestive allergies. – The number of young people who had a food or digestive allergy increased 18 percent between 1997 and 2007, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
New research to be published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology examines the effects of a miscarriage on subsequent pregnancies. – Miscarriage (or spontaneous pregnancy loss) is defined as pregnancy loss before 24 completed weeks of gestation. There is a 20% (one in five) risk of pregnancies ending in a miscarriage in the first three months and one in 100 women have recurrent miscarriages (three or more successive miscarriages).
MSU researcher helps government adopt first-ever exercise guidelines. Guidelines urge physical activity during pregnancy. – Moderate physical activity during pregnancy does not contribute to low birth weight, premature birth or miscarriage and may actually reduce the risk of complications, according to a Michigan State University professor who contributed to the U.S. government’s first-ever guidelines on physical activity.
Childhood wheezing with rhinovirus can increase asthma risk later during childhood. – Infants who experience viral respiratory illnesses with wheezing are known to be at increased risk for developing asthma later during childhood. It is not known, however, whether every type of respiratory virus that produces wheezing presents similar risk.
Asian-white couples face distinct pregnancy risks, revealed by researchers at Stanford University Medical Center. – Pregnant women who are part of an Asian-white couple face an increased risk of gestational diabetes as compared with couples in which both partners are white, according to a new study from Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Pregnant women who take a common epilepsy drug topiramate (Topamax) may increase their risk of birth defects, revealed by researchers. – Taking the epilepsy drug topiramate alone or along with other epilepsy drugs during pregnancy may increase the risk of birth defects, according to a study published in the July 22, 2008, issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Prenatal and postnatal blood lead concentrations are associated with higher rates of total arrests and/or arrests for offenses involving violence. This is the first prospective study to demonstrate an association between developmental exposure to lead and adult criminal behavior. – Lead exposure during childhood is associated with adult criminal behaviour, including violent crime, revealed by researchers in this week’s PLoS Medicine. Childhood lead exposure is a purported risk factor for antisocial behavior, but prior studies either relied on indirect measures of exposure or did not follow participants into adulthood to examine the relationship between lead exposure and criminal activity in young adults.
DNA fingerprinting is a very useful technique for discriminating between viable and non-viable blastocysts. Research could lead to improved pregnancy rates and fewer multiple pregnancies. – Fertility researchers have used DNA fingerprinting for the first time to identify which embryos have implanted after in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and developed successfully to result in the births of healthy babies.
