VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY EXTREMELY COMMON DURING PREGNANCY; MOST CHILDREN BORN VITAMIN D DEFICIENT

The vast majority of pregnant women tested in a study published this year in the Journal of Nutrition were found to be deficient in vitamin D, as were their infants. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh found widespread vitamin D deficiency, even though more than 90 percent of the women tested were taking vitamin supplements during pregnancy.

What you need to know
• Researchers evaluated blood tests on 200 black women and 200 white women who had been studied between 1997 and 2001. Blood samples taken from their infants at birth were also studied.
• More than 80 percent of black women and almost 50 percent of white women tested vitamin D deficient at pregnancy. The levels were even higher among infants; 92.4 percent of black babies and 66.1 percent of white babies were vitamin D deficient at birth.

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EATING FRUITS AND VEGETABLES CUTS RISK OF MISCARRIAGE, SAYS STUDY

The consumption of fruits and vegetables during pregnancy can reduce the chance of a miscarriage, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

The study of nearly 7,000 pregnant women by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked for links between diet, lifestyle and miscarriage, and were detailed in the study led by Dr. Maureen Maconochie from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Maconochie and her colleagues studied thousands of pregnant women and concluded that those who ate fruits and vegetables often in pregnancy were 46 percent less likely to have a miscarriage compared to those who did not use fruits and veggies as often.

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DEPRESSION AND TEENAGE PREGNANCY

Research suggests that childbearing does not necessarily cause psychological distress among teenagers. Dr. Stefanie Mollborn of the University of Colorado and her team investigated stress and depression using a large group of teenage girls and adult women.

In the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, they explain that teenage mothers’ high depression rates have received “considerable research attention” in small studies, but a larger study of adolescent childbearing and depression was needed.

So they used figures from two large long-term surveys, the U.S. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort. The participants completed questionnaires to measure depression, although the term “depression” was avoided.

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YOUNG CHILDREN PERCEIVE MORAL INTENTIONS

Researchers have discovered that 3-year-old children appear to have a moral compass.

Investigators found that a young child’s helpfulness is tempered when they see that the person they intend to help has harmed another person.

Moreover, a child is less helpful when they see that the object of their attention meant to harm another, even if no harm was done.

That’s the conclusion of two new studies of 3-year-olds conducted by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

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LANGUAGE MAY HELP CREATE, NOT JUST CONVEY, THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS

The language we speak may influence not only our thoughts, but our implicit preferences as well. That's the finding of a study by psychologists at Harvard University, who found that bilingual individuals' opinions of different ethnic groups were affected by the language in which they took a test examining their biases and predilections.

The paper appears in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

"Charlemagne is reputed to have said that to speak another language is to possess another soul," says co-author OludaminiOgunnaike, a graduate student at Harvard. "This study suggests that language is much more than a medium for expressing thoughts and feelings. Our work hints that language creates and shapes our thoughts and feelings as well."

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LENGTH OF PREGNANCY INFLUENCED BY PLACENTA STRUCTURE

The nine-month pregnancy in humans is influenced by the structure of the placenta, according to new research into the evolution of reproduction in mammals which ends a 100-year mystery.

The study, by Durham and Reading universities, shows that babies grow twice as fast in the wombs of some mammals compared to others. The difference in growth rates appears to be due to the structure of the placenta and the way it connects mother and baby.

The research has found that the more intimate the connection is between the tissues of the mother and the fetus, the faster the growth of the baby and the shorter the pregnancy. The findings help to explain why humans, whose placentas do not form the complex web-like structure seen in animals such as dogs and leopards, have relatively lengthy pregnancies.

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ANTIBIOTIC TREATMENT FOR EAR INFECTIONS IN KIDS PROVIDES ONLY MODEST BENEFITS, STUDY FINDS

Using antibiotics to treat newly diagnosed acute ear infections among children is modestly more effective than no treatment, but comes with a risk of side effects, according to a new study designed to help advise efforts to rewrite treatment guidelines for the common illness.

Researchers found no evidence that name-brand antibiotics work any better in general than generic antibiotics and that careful examination of the eardrum by a clinician for signs of infection is critical for accurate diagnosis of acute ear infections. The study is published in the Nov. 17 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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USE OF MILD PAINKILLERS IN PREGNANCY LINKED TO INCREASED RISK OF MALE REPRODUCTIVE PROBLEMS, NEW EVIDENCE SHOWS

New evidence has emerged that the use of mild painkillers such as paracetamol, aspirin and ibuprofen, may be part of the reason for the increase in male reproductive disorders in recent decades. Research published in the journal Human Reproduction shows that women who took a combination of more than one mild analgesic during pregnancy, or who took the painkillers during the second trimester of pregnancy, had an increased risk of giving birth to sons with undescended testicles (cryptorchidism) -- a condition that is known to be a risk factor for poor semen quality and testicular germ cell cancer in later life.

The researchers from Denmark, Finland and France found that women who used more than one painkiller simultaneously (e.g. paracetamol and ibuprofen) had a seven-fold increased risk of giving birth to sons with some form of cryptorchidism compared to women who took nothing.

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