Smoother Pregnancy

No one doubts that mothers especially pregnant mothers are among the busiest people on earth. And while the benefits of exercise for these women and their developing fetuses are widely known, many expectant mothers do not exercise. A survey examining daily activities of moms-to-be will soon be released as part of a larger study looking at the effect of maternal exercise on fetal development.

Nina Whear, 38, of Lamas, Norfolk, England, has survived heart surgery just minutes after giving birth to twins. Her husband was told to say goodbye when doctors had given her a 7% chance of survival. A hospital chaplain was brought in to comfort her during her last moments. When Mrs. Whear was found to have a tear in the wall of the aorta - an aortic dissection - at the ninth month of her pregnancy, doctors carried out an emergency c-section (cesarean).

The Hong Kong flu pandemic was responsible for more than 700,000 deaths worldwide in the late 1960s, with major disease outbreaks in Europe in the winter of 1969-1970. A number of studies have been conducted to determine if prenatal exposure to the influenza virus may result in mental disorders that affect a small portion of the population, but no studies have explored the possible effects of prenatal exposure on the mean intelligence in the general population.

The Washington Post on Tuesday examined issues that some parents face when deciding whether to spend at least $1,500 to privately store blood taken from their infants’ umbilical cord and placenta for later personal use in medical treatments.

Forty-nine percent of 15-17-year-old women in Kingston, Jamaica, who were interviewed to identify risk factors for teen pregnancy reported having experienced sexual coercion or violence, and one-third stated that they had been persuaded or forced to participate in their first sexual experience.

The new science of epigenetics explains how genes can be modified by the environment, and a prime result of epigenetic inquiry has just been published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org): You are what your mother did not eat during pregnancy.

Florida health officials on Wednesday marked National Minority Health Month by discussing the infant mortality among blacks, the Fort Meyers News-Press reports. According to the Florida Department of Health, black infants are 2.5 times more likely to die before their first birthdays than whites.

Exposure to air pollution during early and late pregnancy may curb the normal growth of the developing fetus, suggests research published ahead of print in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Pollutants from traffic may be particularly important, the research suggests. The authors base their findings on singleton births between 1999 and 2003 in the state of New Jersey, USA. During this period, 492,678 singleton babies were born in New Jersey.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) have been awarded £2.8m to improve maternal and newborn health in five target countries Zimbabwe, Kenya, Bangladesh, India and Sierra Leone. Each year more than half a million women and four million babies worldwide die from complications during pregnancy and childbirth, nearly all in developing countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The American Thyroid Association will hold its “Research Summit and Spring Symposium on the Thyroid and Pregnancy” April 16 - 17 in Washington, D.C. at the Madison Hotel, 1177 N. 15th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005.