IVF, HPV, fracking and language development
IVF doesn’t raise breast cancer risk, study shows A new large, comprehensive study found in vitro fertilization, or IVF, doesn’t raise a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer.
Dutch researchers studied more than 25,000 women undergoing fertility treatment in the Netherlands between 1980 and 1995. They found IVF treatment, compared with nonIVF treatment, was not associated with increased risk of breast cancer after a median followup of 21 years.
“Breast cancer risk among IVFtreated women was also not significantly different from that in the general population,” the authors wrote in the study, published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Toddlers might have trouble learning new words in a noisy home Is your toddler having trouble learning new words? It could be thanks to background noise at home or at school, say University of WisconsinMadison researchers.
More than 100 toddlers took part in three experiments to gauge their ability to learn new words in environments with varying degrees of background noise. Louder background noise hindered the children’s ability to learn words, concludes the new study, published in the journal Child Development.
“Our study suggests that adults should be aware of the amount of background speech in the environment when they’re interacting with young children,” lead researcher Brianna McMillan said. Twenty-six or older? The HPV vaccine is still helpful Women who are 26 or older can benefit from the HPV vaccine, according to a new study highlighting the vaccine’s benefit beyond a younger population.
The international research, published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases, found the vaccine protects women older than 26 against HPV infection — and is safe and effective across a wide age range of women.
The study recruited more than 10,000 women in 12 countries across four continents and followed each woman for four to seven years.
HPV, or human papillomaviruses, can cause cancers of the cervix, anus and throat. Study links fracking with increased asthma risk Anew American study links fracking with an increased risk of worsened asthma.
The research, published recently in JAMA Internal Medicine, looked at more than 35,000 asthma patients in Pennsylvania between 2005 and 2012. During that time, residential unconventional natural gas development activity — a process that involves fracking — was on the rise in the area.
People who lived closer to a large number — or bigger — active natural gas wells were 1.5 to four times more likely to suffer asthma attacks, but the study didn’t determine the reason for this link.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the controversial process of drilling into the earth and injecting water, sand and chemicals at a high pressure to crack rock in order to extract oil and gas.