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Safer indoor sex work spaces promote health and safety of street-involved women

Safer indoor sex work spaces provide important and potentially life-saving benefits to sex workers including reduced exposure to violence and HIV and improved relationships with police, according to a study published by the Gender and Sexual Health Initiative of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) and the University of British Columbia.

11 May 2012

Pregnant White women more likely to smoke cigarettes

A new report shows that 21.8 percent of pregnant White women aged 15 to 44 currently (within the past 30 days) smoked cigarettes.

11 May 2012

Ariz., Iowa Republicans tweak abortion, contraception bills

GOP legislators have backed down from some of the anti-abortion and anti-contraception coverage measures they wanted.

11 May 2012

This Mother's Day, ensure babies everywhere are born free of HIV

Ahead of Mother's Day on May 13, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe writes in this post in the Huffington Post's "Global Motherhood" blog, "Together we can go from 390,000 children becoming infected with HIV each year to zero," and he highlights "three simple things we can all do to ensure babies everywhere can be born free from HIV."

11 May 2012

Citywide ban on public smoking can impact maternal and fetal health

A citywide ban on public smoking in Colorado led to significant decreases in maternal smoking and preterm births, providing the first evidence in the U.S. that such interventions can impact maternal and fetal health, according to an article in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

11 May 2012

Female Presidents of Liberia, Malawi pledge to address gender equality, improve women's health

"The only two female heads of state in Africa, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Malawian President Joyce Banda, have just committed to using their positions to improve the lives of women across the continent," Inter Press Service reports.

11 May 2012

Education the most important factor in reducing maternal deaths

A scientific analysis of 50 years of maternal mortality data from Chile has found that the most important factor in reducing maternal mortality is the educational level of women. "

11 May 2012

Maternal gluten sensitivity may increase risk of schizophrenia in children

Babies born to women with sensitivity to gluten appear to be at increased risk for certain psychiatric disorders later in life, according to research by scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore.

11 May 2012

TherapeuticsMD introduces third prescription prenatal vitamin

TherapeuticsMD, Inc., parent company of vitaMedMD, LLC, a specialty pharmaceutical company, announced that on May 10, 2012 it launched its third prescription prenatal vitamin, vitaMedMD RediChew Rx, following the successful launch of vitaMedMD One Rx earlier this month and vitaMedMD Plus Rx last month.

11 May 2012

IGABT effective at controlling return and spread of cervical cancer

Delivering radiotherapy directly to cancer of the cervix using 3-D imaging techniques is effective at controlling the return and spread of the disease and, in most cases, avoids the need for hysterectomies, according to research presented at the World Congress of Brachytherapy today.

11 May 2012

USAID launches five-year initiative in Nigeria to strengthen HIV, TB services

U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria Terence McCulley on Tuesday in Abuja, Nigeria, launched a five-year, $224 million USAID program, titled Strengthening Integrated Delivery of HIV/AIDS Services (SIDHAS), that aims to "increase access to high-quality comprehensive HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis prevention, treatment, care and related services through improved efficiencies in service delivery," the Daily Trust reports.

10 May 2012

Hospital midwife inadvertently spreads whooping cough to up to 170 people

A Middlemore Hospital midwife could have infected up to 170 people with whooping cough. If passed onto babies or women in the last three months of pregnancy, the disease can lead to severe illness or even death. Whooping cough is a highly infectious disease caused by bacteria which is easily spread through coughing and sneezing, much like the common cold. Also known as pertussis, it is distinguishable by a “whooping” sound at the end of coughing attacks.

10 May 2012

Checking for specific genetic variants can help identify women at high risk of PND

Researchers at Warwick Medical School have discovered a way of identifying which women are most at risk of postnatal depression (PND) by checking for specific genetic variants.

10 May 2012

Best and worst mothers worldwide

Right in time for Mother’s day comes a report on the best and worst mothers worldwide. U.S. moms have moved up six places - from 31st to 25th - in the 13th annual Save The Children State of the World's Mothers report. That puts the U.S. right between Belarus and the Czech Republic. Norway is No. 1, just ahead of Iceland and Sweden.

10 May 2012

New approach to advance quality of pregnancy monitoring

The University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bioengineering Professor Todd Coleman, in collaboration with Materials Science and Engineering Professor John A. Rogers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled "Epidermal Electronics for Continuous Pregnancy Monitoring."

10 May 2012

Caffeine consumption: How much is too much?

Chocolate, coffee and cola are perhaps three of your favourite consumables; however, they are also three caffeine-rich substances which all contribute to your daily caffeine consumption. According to the BBC, people should not exceed 400mg caffeine a day, and this limit halves for pregnant women, for which only 200mg/day is recommended.

10 May 2012

UNAIDS launches campaign aimed at ending new HIV infections among children by 2015

UNAIDS on Tuesday launched a new campaign "aimed at ending new HIV infections among children by 2015 and ensuring mothers living with HIV remain healthy," Xinhua reports.

10 May 2012

Study identifies five factors that promote positive body image in women

Women with high family support and limited pressure to achieve the 'thin and beautiful' ideal have a more positive body image. That's according to a new study looking at five factors that may help young women to be more positive about their bodies, in the context of a society where discontent with appearance is common among women.

10 May 2012

$Women with spine fractures can benefit from alendronate therapy$

Women with spine fractures can benefit from alendronate therapy

Continuing a popular but controversial treatment for osteoporosis could reduce spine fracture risk for a particular group of patients, but others could see little to no change if they discontinue it. Based on available evidence, a UCSF researcher reevaluated his 2006 finding from a randomized 10-year study of alendronate, a type of bisphosphonate - a class of drugs that prevent loss of bone mass.

10 May 2012

KLF15 molecule inhibits action of estrogen in the endometrium

Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have discovered a molecule that inhibits the action of estrogen. This female hormone plays a key role in the growth, maintenance and repair of reproductive tissues and fuels the development of endometrial and breast cancers.

10 May 2012