More Pregnant People Are Relying on Early Prenatal Testing As States Toughen Abortion Laws
WASHINGTON — In Utah, more of Dr. Cara Heuser’s maternal-fetal medicine patients are requesting early ultrasounds, hoping to detect serious problems in time to choose whether to continue the pregnancy or have an abortion.
In North Carolina, more obstetrics patients of Dr. Clayton Alfonso and his colleagues are relying on early genetic screenings that don’t provide a firm diagnosis.
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The reason? New state abortion restrictions mean the clock is ticking.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, many health care providers say an increasing number of patient...
Source: TIME: Health - February 12, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: LAURA UNGAR and AMANDA SEITZ Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate wire Source Type: news
What Are the Complications of Sickle Cell Trait?
Discussion
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a group of inherited blood disorders where there are abnormal hemoglobin molecules and the red blood cells take on a characteristic sickled shape instead of a rounded shape. Sickled hemoglobin provides an evolutionary advantage of giving the individual increased protection against severe and cerebral malaria. The sickled shape doesn’t move through the vascular system as well and therefore is more likely to aggregate in small vessels causing an increased risk of vaso-occlusive disease, acute chest syndrome, splenic sequestration, and priapism. There is also an increased risk of ...
Source: PediatricEducation.org - September 4, 2023 Category: Pediatrics Authors: Pediatric Education Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news
Doctors develop new way to use MRI to predict pregnancy complications
FINDINGSUCLA scientists have developed anew way to use magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, to scan the placenta. The noninvasive approach offers valuable insights into how the mother ’s blood enters the placenta and sustains the fetus with oxygen and nutrients during early pregnancy. The technique breaks new ground because most previous studies on this subject occurred in the laboratory after childbirth.BACKGROUNDThe placenta is a temporary organ that joins a pregnant woman to her baby through the umbilical cord. Few methods exist for safely and accurately studying the placenta in early pregnancy. Ultrasound indirectly m...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - December 6, 2017 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
NanoVelcro microchips for prenatal testing
New non-invasive technique could be a safer alternative to amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling. (Source: Nanotechweb.org News)
Source: Nanotechweb.org News - August 7, 2017 Category: Nanotechnology Authors: Belle Dum é Source Type: news
How New Genetic Technologies Are Reshaping Pregnancy And Parenting
As the nascent field of genetic testing advances, expectant parents face a dizzying array of new and difficult questions. Would you want to know if your child will have Down syndrome? Or if your baby is genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s disease? What about if the fetus has a gene duplication that might mean nothing ― or could spell a serious genetic disorder?
The sci-fi world of designer babies may not be here yet, but modern genetic technology is already fundamentally changing pregnancy and parenting. Thanks to advances in prenatal and postnatal genetic testing, parents now have access to unpr...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - February 20, 2017 Category: Science Source Type: news
How New Genetic Technologies Are Reshaping Pregnancy And Parenting
As the nascent field of genetic testing advances, expectant parents face a dizzying array of new and difficult questions. Would you want to know if your child will have Down syndrome? Or if your baby is genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s disease? What about if the fetus has a gene duplication that might mean nothing ― or could spell a serious genetic disorder?
The sci-fi world of designer babies may not be here yet, but modern genetic technology is already fundamentally changing pregnancy and parenting. Thanks to advances in prenatal and postnatal genetic testing, parents now have access to unpr...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - February 20, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
What Ohio's 20-Week Abortion Ban Law Will Really Mean For Women
Ohio just became the 18th state to pass an arbitrary ban on abortions after 20 weeks.
The new law, which Gov. John Kasich (R) signed Tuesday, outlaws an extremely rare procedure. Only about 1 percent of all abortions take place after 20 weeks, and most are the result of doctors finding birth defects that were undetectable in earlier screenings.
The ban will push women to travel out of state if they discover a serious defect during a second trimester ultrasound, adding another layer of logistical and financial difficulty to an already complicated termination procedure, says Dr. Jennifer K. Hsia, a clini...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - December 15, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
What Ohio's 20-Week Abortion Ban Law Will Really Mean For Women
Ohio just became the 18th state to pass an arbitrary ban on abortions after 20 weeks.
The new law, which Gov. John Kasich (R) signed Tuesday, outlaws an extremely rare procedure. Only about 1 percent of all abortions take place after 20 weeks, and most are the result of doctors finding birth defects that were undetectable in earlier screenings.
The ban will push women to travel out of state if they discover a serious defect during a second trimester ultrasound, adding another layer of logistical and financial difficulty to an already complicated termination procedure, says Dr. Jennifer K. Hsia, a clini...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - December 15, 2016 Category: Science Source Type: news
Chorionic Villus Sampling
Title: Chorionic Villus SamplingCategory: Procedures and TestsCreated: 1/31/2005 12:00:00 AMLast Editorial Review: 9/13/2016 12:00:00 AM (Source: MedicineNet Digestion General)
Source: MedicineNet Digestion General - September 13, 2016 Category: Nutrition Source Type: news
Precision medicine: What to know about cell-free DNA screening
With more women seeking tests for common chromosome conditions in pregnancy, many are now opting for newly developed non-invasive cell-free DNA (cfDNA) screening. But like all screening tests, it has limitations and isn ’t appropriate for all patients. Find out how cfDNA works and which of your patients may benefit from the screening.
Anew continuing medical education (CME) module, developed by AMA in partnership with Scripps Translational Science Institute and The Jackson Laboratory, is helping physicians understand what the test detects, which patients benefit most from it, what to consider when ordering the test and ...
Source: AMA Wire - August 31, 2016 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Troy Parks Source Type: news
Embryos with defective cells 'can still develop healthily'
Conclusion
This mouse study helps to advance scientific understanding of how some embryos containing a mix of euploid and aneuploid cells develop normally and others do not.
This looks to be related to the proportion of euploid and aneuploid cells early on in the cells' development, and their specific location.
However, though the researchers saw clear implications for the assessment of embryo vitality in human fertility clinics, this research is at too early a stage to be able to accurately predict outcomes for human foetal development.
Follow-up studies in people are needed to test whether this mice observation happens ...
Source: NHS News Feed - March 30, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Pregnancy/child Genetics/stem cells Source Type: news
New Down’s syndrome test more accurate than current screening
Conclusion
This large study has shown that the new cfDNA test is better than current standard screening at detecting three trisomy conditions during pregnancy. The confidence in accurately identifying affected pregnancies was strongest for Down’s syndrome. There were much wider confidence intervals for the other two conditions.
The cfDNA test was not 100% accurate, as there were false positive results for each condition, though much fewer than with standard screening.
Around 3% of the cfDNA tests did not produce a result. Careful consideration and further research may be needed to decide the best approach in these cases...
Source: NHS News Feed - April 2, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Genetics/stem cells Medical practice Pregnancy/child Source Type: news
Chorionic Villus Sampling
Title: Chorionic Villus SamplingCategory: Procedures and TestsCreated: 1/31/2005 4:58:00 AMLast Editorial Review: 7/30/2013 12:00:00 AM (Source: MedicineNet Digestion General)
Source: MedicineNet Digestion General - July 30, 2013 Category: Nutrition Source Type: news
The future of fertility: is it really too late for a baby?
For decades women have been told that their fertility falls dramatically through their 30s – knowledge that affects their choice of career and relationship. But the biological clock doesn't run as fast as we've been toldIn the tentative, post-9/11 spring of 2002, I was, at 30, in the midst of extricating myself from my first marriage. My husband and I had met at university but couldn't find two academic jobs in the same place, so we spent the three years of our marriage living in different states. After I accepted a tenure-track position in California and he turned down a postdoctoral research position nearby – th...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - July 13, 2013 Category: Science Tags: Fertility problems Medical research Society Women Features Life and style Childbirth The Observer Science Source Type: news
New Down’s syndrome blood test 'more reliable'
Conclusion
The current study suggests that screening for trisomies 13, 18, and 21 using a DNA based maternal blood test may identify similar numbers of affected foetuses to the current screening test. However, the new screening test appears to be better at ruling out the condition in women with normal pregnancies, this means that fewer women would be offered unnecessary invasive diagnostic testing.
There are a few important points to note:
Not all women in this study had given birth when the study was published, and these babies will need to be assessed to make sure that no cases of trisomy were missed.
If this t...
Source: NHS News Feed - June 7, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Genetics/stem cells Medical practice Pregnancy/child Source Type: news
