Home Pregnancy Tests Can Lead To Better Prenatal Care

The simple intervention Home Pregnancy Tests Can Lead To Better Prenatal Care

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“This simple intervention – giving home pregnancy test kits to women who are having unprotected sex – was able to do what no other study has done: Influence women to be more vigilant about potential pregnancy,” of providing women who are having unprotected sex with a home pregnancy test could have a substantial impact on the health of potential newborns, according to a Michigan State University study.
In research published in the February edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, MSU’s Mary Nettleman found that significantly more women who had a home pregnancy test at home not only suspected they could be pregnant but also took tests much more frequently.

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Breastfeeding While Taking Seizure Drugs May Not Harm Child's IQ, Study Suggests

There's good news for women with epilepsy. Breastfeeding your baby while taking your seizure medication may have no harmful effect on your child's IQ later on, according to a study published in the November 24, 2010, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"While more research is needed with larger numbers of women and their babies, these results are reassuring to women who want to give their babies all the benefits of breastfeeding but also need to remain on their epilepsy medications to avoid devastating seizures," said study author Kimford Meador, MD, of Emory University in Atlanta and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN).

The study followed 194 pregnant women who were taking one epilepsy drug. Of their 199 babies, 42 percent were breastfed. When they were three years old, the children were given IQ tests.

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Influenza Vaccines of the Future

In a review article appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, examine research under way to address the limitations of currently available influenza vaccines and develop more efficient and reliable strategies to make vaccines to protect against seasonal as well as pandemic influenza.

Although licensed seasonal flu vaccines safely and effectively protect most people who receive them from illness and death, the degree of protection varies depending on how well the circulating virus strains and those in the vaccine match. A vaccine recipient's age and health status also can affect the effectiveness of influenza vaccination.

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A NEW READ ON DNA SEQUENCING

The twisting, ladder-like form of the DNA molecule -- the architectural floor plan of life -- contains a universe of information critical to human health. Enormous effort has been invested in deciphering the genetic code, including, most famously, the Human Genome Project. Nevertheless, the process of reading some three-billion nucleotide "letters" to reveal an individual's full genome remains a costly and complex undertaking.

Now biophysicist Stuart Lindsay, of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, has demonstrated a technique that may lead to rapid, low cost reading of whole genomes, through recognition of the basic chemical units -- the nucleotide bases that make up the DNA double helix. An affordable technique for DNA sequencing would be a tremendous advance for medicine, allowing routine clinical genomic screening for diagnostic purposes; the design of a new generation of custom-fit pharmaceuticals; and even genomic tinkering to enhance cellular resistance to viral or bacterial infection.According to quantum theory, elementary particles like electrons can do some very strange and counter-intuitive things, in defiance of classical laws of physics.

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