Family & Pregnancy

New DNA test more accurate detecting Down Syndrome in pregnancy

It was the news Jennifer Fontaine had been dreading: Her unborn child tested positive for a deadly chromosome abnormality. “When I got a positive result, it was very devastating,” said Fontaine.

Her then unborn daughter had tested positive for trisomy 18, a deadly chromosome abnormality. Half of infants don’t survive their first week of life, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“I researched online, and the things I was seeing, it was very upsetting,” said Fontaine.

“Women (like Fontaine) are being given troubling news or anxiety provoking news,” said Dr. Diana Bianchi, a medical geneticist and executive director of the Mother Infant Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center.

What’s even worse is that that news is often wrong.

“Ninety-six percent of the time the screening test was positive, but the fetus has normal chromosomes,” said Bianchi.

But a new screening test is promising to cut down on false positives. It’s a simple blood draw called a cell-free DNA test, where doctors analyze fetal DNA circulating in the mother’s blood. In today’s New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at Tufts Medical Center compared the DNA test to current screening methods with stunning results

“Only 3 percent of the women had a false positive result. But if you had a positive result, then there was a 45 percent chance that the fetus actually had Down syndrome,” said Bianchi.

According to the study, the new DNA test is 10 times more accurate than standard tests and safer, too.

“Fewer women are going on to have unnecessary invasive diagnostic tests (like amniocentesis),” said Bianchi.

In amniocentesis, a needle is injected directly into the womb.

“There is a small chance of miscarriage associated with amniocentesis,” said Bianchi.

Less than a week after her DNA screening test, Fontaine’s doctors gave her the good news.

“The results were negative … she was perfect. Her DNA was perfect. The chromosomes were fine,” said Fontaine. “We were ecstatic.”

On Dec. 17, 2013, Morgan Stephanie was born. She weighed 6 pounds and 4 ounces and was 100 percent healthy.

“She’s doing great. She’s hitting all of her milestones,” said Fontaine.

The DNA test is already available for high-risk pregnancies, but currently, insurance doesn’t cover it in low risk women. Bianchi said that may soon change as more studies come out confirming Tufts’ findings.

source: wcvb

Breastfeeding may boost IQ in babies: Study

Children who are breastfed score higher on IQ tests and perform better in school, scientists say.

A new study by sociologists at Brigham Young University pinpoints two parenting skills as the real source of this cognitive boost: Responding to children’s emotional cues and reading to children starting at 9 months of age.

Breastfeeding mothers tend to do both of those things, said lead study author Ben Gibbs.

“It’s really the parenting that makes the difference,” said Gibbs.

“Breastfeeding matters in others ways, but this actually gives us a better mechanism and can shape our confidence about interventions that promote school readiness,” said Gibbs.

According to the analysis, improvements in sensitivity to emotional cues and time reading to children could yield 2-3 months’ worth of brain development by age 4 (as measured by math and reading readiness assessments).

“Because these are four-year-olds, a month or two represents a non-trivial chunk of time,” Gibbs said.

“And if a child is on the edge of needing special education, even a small boost across some eligibility line could shape a child’s educational trajectory,” said Gibbs.

Researchers utilised a national data set that followed 7,500 mothers and their children from birth to five years of age.

The data set is rich with information on the home environment, including how early and how often parents read to their kids.

Additionally, each of the mothers in the study also participated in video-taped activities with their children.

As the child tried to complete a challenging task, the mother’s supportiveness and sensitivity to their child’s emotional cues were measured.

Sandra Jacobson of Wayne State University School of Medicine noted that children in the study who were breastfed for 6 months or longer performed the best on reading assessments because they also “experienced the most optimal parenting practices.

“Gibbs and Forste found that reading to an infant every day as early as age 9 months and sensitivity to the child’s cues during social interactions, rather than breastfeeding per se, were significant predictors of reading readiness at age 4 years,” said Jacobson.

The study was published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

Source: Times of India

 

Too posh to push? Beware! C-section boosts child’s risk of obesity

A new study conducted by researchers suggests that babies born by caesarean section are more likely to struggle with obesity later in life.

Not just this, C-sections also boost the odds of certain problems with later pregnancies, including abnormalities in the placenta that can lead to severe bleeding during labour, type-1 diabetes in childhood and other diseases.

Findings of a research conducted at Imperial College London, which include data from 10 countries, suggest babies born through caesarean section were 26 percent more likely to face weight issues during adulthood than those born by vaginal delivery.

Further, the study also showed that average BMI of adults born by caesarean section is around half a unit more than those born by vaginal delivery.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Source: Zee news

 

Father claims he delivered his own baby after staff left delivery room

One Florida dad is arguing he had to deliver his wife’s baby in a hospital – without a nurse or doctor present. But the hospital is disputing his claim.

According to a report, Zaheer Ali took his wife, Indira, to Bethesda Hospital East in Boynton Beach, Fla., late Saturday evening after she started experiencing contractions.  Once at the hospital, doctors felt that Indira’s labor was stalling, so they put her on a
Pitocin drip to help increase her contractions.

As Indira’s contractions began speeding up, another woman elsewhere in the hospital started having a complicated delivery and needed an emergency cesarean section. Indira’s obstetrician, Dr. Elana Deutsch, said she ordered the Pitocin drip stopped so she could leave Indira to quickly perform the C-section.

But Zaheer said the baby was coming – with or without the Pitocin drip. “My wife was screaming,” Zaheer Ali told . “The nurse says, ‘You have to wait.’ ”

The nurse left the room to retrieve Deutsch, but by the time they came back, the baby had already been delivered. Deutsch said it must have happened very quickly, since it only took her 30 minutes to perform the C-section.

“The patient was obviously very upset. I was very upset,” Deutsch said. “I think it was a new nurse, and I think she was nervous about being in the room alone.”

Both Indira and her new baby Aaliyah are both healthy and doing fine, but the now father of three is not happy.

“The hospital is saying, ‘Sorry,’ but I just feel it’s wrong,” Zaheer Ali said. “It’s a hospital. There are supposed to be nurses and midwives. A nurse should be there with you.”

However, Bethesda Hospital East conducted an investigation of the incident, and Lisa Kronhaus, a spokeswoman for the hospital, claims the family wasn’t alone after all. She said that hospital charts show that Aaliyah was indeed delivered by a nurse.

“There was a 1-to-1 ratio that night. The nurse did leave the room to tell the doctor she was ready to deliver. Mom made a noise. The nurse sitting outside of her room went in, checked her, and saw the baby started to crown, and nurse delivered the baby,” Kronhaus told. “It’s in the medical chart. It’s legally documented.”

Source: fox news

Acetaminophen, pain killer during pregnancy affects behavior problems in kids

Pregnant women have long been assured that acetaminophen can treat their aches, pains and fevers without bringing harm to the babies they carry. Now researchers say they have found a strong link between prenatal use of the medication and cases of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in children.

The findings do not establish that prenatal exposure to acetaminophen — which is also an ingredient in Excedrin and is known in Europe and other parts of the world as paracetamol — caused the observed increase in hyperactivity disorders. But they underscore that medications are only “safe” for pregnant women until studies become sensitive enough to detect subtle problems, said Dr. Daniel Kahn, a UCLA obstetrician who was not involved in the research.

“We used to count a baby’s 10 fingers and 10 toes and assume that any drug his mother took must have been safe,” said Kahn, a specialist in fetal-maternal health. Now observational studies like this are capable of picking up on possible drug effects that are less obvious and harder to measure. As such research moves forward, he said, it’s best to follow a “less is better” rule when it comes to taking medications during pregnancy.

Source: Los Angeles Times

 

The Odd Ways Pregnancy Can Cause Vision Problems

Pregnancy can cause vision problems in sometimes unexpected ways, as two new medical reports show.

In one report, a 25-year-old first-time mother experienced blurred vision and flashes of light in both eyes when she was 36 weeks into her pregnancy.

An eye exam showed she had damage to the back of her eye, including swelling of the optic nerve. Another test showed the woman also had extremely high blood pressure, and a urine sample revealed she had abnormally high levels of protein in her urine.

Doctors determined that her eye problems were caused by severe preeclampsia, a complication of pregnancy involving high blood pressure and high levels of protein in the urine, according to the case reported by the researchers, from Mohammed V University in Morocco

The only cure for preeclampsia is to deliver the baby, and the woman underwent a prompt Caesarean section. She had a baby boy, who, despite his low birth weight, appeared to be healthy. Three months later, the woman’s vision was back to normal, the researchers said.
Source: Yahoo news

Number of test-tube babies born in U.S. hits record percentage

More test-tube babies were born in the United States in 2012 than ever before, and they constituted a higher percentage of total births than at any time since the technology was introduced in the 1980s, according to a report released on Monday.

The annual report was from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART), an organization of medical professionals.

SART’s 379 member clinics, which represent more than 90 percent of the infertility clinics in the country, reported that in 2012 they performed 165,172 procedures involving in vitro fertilization (IVF), in which an egg from the mother-to-be or a donor is fertilized in a lab dish. They resulted in the birth of 61,740 babies.

That was about 2,000 more IVF babies than in 2011. With about 3.9 million babies born in the United States in 2012, the IVF newborns accounted for just over 1.5 percent of the total, more than ever before.

The growing percentage reflects, in part, the increasing average age at which women give birth for the first time, since fertility problems become more common as people age. The average age of first-time mothers is now about 26 years; it was 21.4 years in 1970.

Although the rising number of test-tube babies suggests that the technology has become mainstream, critics of IVF point out that the numbers, particularly the success rates, mask wide disparities.

“It’s important for people to understand that women over 35 have the highest percentage of failures,” said Miriam Zoll, author of the 2013 book “Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility and the Pursuit of High Tech Babies.”

Earlier data from SART showed that the percentage of attempts that result in live births is 10 times higher in women under 35 than in women over 42. And in the older women fewer than half the IVF pregnancies result in a live birth.

Zoll added, “these treatments have consistently failed two-thirds of the time since 1978,” when the first test tube baby was born, in England.

After years in which IVF physicians were criticized for transferring multiple embryos to increase the odds of pregnancy – because that sometimes resulted in the birth of triplets and even higher multiples, often with dangerously low birthweights and other health risks – infertility clinics transferred fewer embryos per cycle in 2012 than 2011. As a result, the number of twin and triplet births were both down.

Source: Reuters

Tips for tackling asthma during pregnancy

Expecting a child is the most exciting and happy phase in a woman’s life, but suffering from an asthma attack is the worst nightmare a pregnant lady can face.

As per National Asthma Education Group for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), asthma is one of the most common diseases that can complicate a pregnancy.

It is advisable for pregnant women to identify the early asthma symptoms as the disease’s effects on pregnant women are appalling, Parents India magazine reported.

If asthma becomes uncontrolled, it can bring about a risk for the mother’s as well as for the baby’s health. This situation can even lead to further complications like oxygen deprivation for the baby, morning sickness, vaginal bleeding, high blood pressure and protein in the urine after 20 weeks of pregnancy (preeclampsia), restricted fetal growth, complicated labor, need for a C-section, premature birth, low birth weight and in extreme cases, the baby’s life might be in jeopardy.

Since the fetus gets its oxygen from the mother’s blood, this condition leads to decreased oxygen in the fetal blood.

Swimming is known to be a particularly good exercise for women suffering from asthma. Using an inhaled bronchodilator ten minutes before you exercise may help you better tolerate your recommended exercise during pregnancy.

It is also advisable for the pregnant women who have asthma to get their condition monitored on a regular basis. A check-up once in three weeks is recommended by expert doctors worldwide.

Source: DNA India

Identical quadruplets surprise mom expecting triplets

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Kimberly and Craig Fugate were expecting Kenleigh, Kristen and Kayleigh. But Kelsey, born with her sisters on February 8, was a complete surprise.

The identical quadruplets were born via cesarean section in the Winfred L. Wiser Hospital for Women and Infants at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi.

“They had gotten the three out and they said, ‘More feet’. “I said, ‘No!’ It was an instant shock.”

The odds of spontaneous quadruplets — conceived without fertility assistance — are 1 in 729,000, according to Dr. James Bofill, Kimberly Fugate’s physician and a professor of maternal fetal medicine at the University of Mississippi.

The odds in this case were even slimmer as the Fugate girls are identical, meaning they split from a single egg.

“Those odds are incalculable,” Bofill said in a hospital press release. The last known set of identical quadruplets was born in Germany in January 2012. Experts estimate there are 50 to 60 sets worldwide.

You may know the Mathias quads — Grace, Emily, Mary Claire and Anna — who are in the eighth grade and appeared on the Discovery Health Channel’s “Super Quads.” And perhaps you remember a Lifetime reality show called “Four of a Kind,” which featured identical quadruplets Megan, Kendra, Sarah and Calli Durst, of Buffalo, Minnesota.

The Fugates were originally surprised to learn they were pregnant at all, according to WAPT. Then in November, the 42-year-old mom was told she was having triplets. The fourth baby managed to keep her existence a secret until Fugate went into labor at 28 weeks.

Kenleigh Rosa was born at 7:55, weighing 2 pounds, 1 ounce.

Kristen Sue was born at 7:57 weighing 2 pounds, 4 ounces.

Kayleigh Pearl was born at 7:58 weighing 2 pounds, 8 ounces.

And Kelsey Roxanne was born a minute later weighing 2 pounds, 6 ounces.

Bofill told The Clarion Ledger the hidden quad was a first in his 27-year career.

“I was very embarrassed, obviously,” Bofill said. “The news was sent to me by one of my fellows. I thought she was kidding.”

The quadruplets join older sister Katelyn, who is 10 years old. It’s unclear when they’ll be able to go home.

“Typically, when babies are born prematurely, doctors tell the families to expect them to stay in the (neonatal intensive care unit) until their original due date, which in this case would be May 2,” said hospital spokeswoman Jennifer Hospodor. “It is possible
that some or all of the girls would be stronger enough to go home before that, or have to stay longer. It depends on how they develop over the next 12 weeks.”

Source: CNN

 

Big belly raises death risk in heart attack survivors

http://topnews.in/files/big-belly101.jpgHigh waist circumference, severe obesity has been linked with the greatest risk of death in heart attack survivors, according to a research.

Professor Tabassome Simon said that the impact of obesity on long term mortality and cardiovascular complications in the general population has been the object of recent debate and much emphasis has also been given to the deleterious role of abdominal obesity.

Simon said that at the time of a heart attack, early mortality tends to be lower in obese patients, a phenomenon well known in critical care situations and described as the `obesity paradox`.

At 5 years, absolute mortality was highest in the leanest patients (BMI less than 22 kg /m2) and lowest in patients with BMI between 25 and 35 kg /m2 (i.e. overweight and mild obesity). Patients with severe obesity (BMI = 35 kg/m2) had a markedly increased mortality after 3 years. Severe abdominal obesity (waist circumference more than 100 cm in women and more than 115 cm in men) was also associated with increased long-term mortality.

Simon said that as waist circumference is strongly linked to BMI, the researchers determined the upper quartile of waist circumference within each BMI category and used both variables together to determine their respective role in association with long-term mortality.

She added that they found that both lean patients (BMI less than 22 kg/m2) and very obese patients (BMI =35 kg/m2) had an increased risk of death at 5 years: + 41 percent and + 65 percent, respectively. Being in the upper quartile of waist circumference was also an indicator of increased mortality at 5 years (+ 44 percent).