Heidi Anne Duerr, MPH

Is there a way to predict which patients will have the best outcomes following an assisted reproductive intervention? Dr William Gibbons, director of the Family Fertility Program at Texas Children’s Hospital and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine, and colleagues examined birth weight and gestational age of singleton pregnancies from in vitro fertilization, donor egg, and gestational carrier cycles to determine which factors most influence outcomes.

Progesterone support during the luteal phase is needed to allow for implementation in medically assisted cycles. To date, available options have not met all of the ideals of the “perfect” progesterone strategy-easy to administer, safe with minimal adverse effects, and effective in producing pregnancies.

The fertility field has seen incredible successes with in vitro fertilization and intracytoplasmic sperm injection. However, the resulting successes have yielded concern over the high rates of multiple pregnancies, which can result in increased maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality as well as increased health care utilization and costs.

Evidence shows that combined oral contraceptives are contraindicative in women who have migraines with auras (MA) due to increased risk of ischemic stroke. So what can these women do?

Despite the wide range of contraceptives available, almost 50% of pregnancies in the United States are unintended, with the highest rates among women aged 18 to 24 years. Meanwhile, few studies have explored contraceptive responsibility and no studies since the 1980s have looked at female college students’ perceptions of such. Without this data, physicians and health educators are unable to adequately and effectively address STD and pregnancy prevention among this patient population.

Approximately 5% of women who seek medical assistance for menorrhagia from their primary care physicians or gynecologists never make their way to a hematologist, even though many of these women have such underlying hemostatic abnormalities as decreased von Willebrand factor (VWF), platelet dysfunction, and decreased coagulation factors. These women in turn are in danger of experiencing bleeding complications during surgery, childbirth, or other invasive procedures.

To ascertain if levobupivcaine can serve as a safe and effective option for women undergoing elective cesarean-section, Dr. I Gunusen, Department ofAnesthesiology and Reanimation at Egee University Faculty of Medicine, Turkey, and colleagues a randomized study of 120 pregnant women.

Modern medicine recognizes the potential impact of stress on physical well-being, but can stress pass through the mother to the fetus? Indeed, it has been hypothesized that maternal chronic stress can alter the uterine environment and may affect length of gestation, fetal growth, birth weight, and spontaneous preterm birth. Similarly, research on cortisol levels in fetuses and mothers has found that anxiety in mothers can affect the function of the placenta. With so much evidence pointing to the interaction between maternal psychological well-being and fetal wellness, there has become an increased need to find effective, nonpharmacological interventions for pregnant women.

Compared to nondiabetic women, women with diabetes and high glucose levels during pregnancy tend to have babies with high birth weights. Moreover, it is thought that these offspring are at greater risk for obesity than those children born to women without diabetes. But is the larger body size due to greater lean mass in addition to greater fat mass?

Researchers found an 11% treatment effect in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) taking rifaximin (Xifaxan) for 2 weeks; 40% of patients receiving the medication reported adequate relief of symptoms.

Preeclampsia is a rapidly progressive condition that affects as many as 8% of all pregnancies. To better understand how and why this process occurs, researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine looked to see if neutrophil infiltration could affect vascular expression of the enzyme matrix metalloproteinase-1 (MMP-1) and other extracellular matrix proteins, which in turn might result in vascular dysfunction in women with preeclampsia.