Finally, good news for suffering moms-to-be
Those experiencing morning sickness less likely to have miscarriages, research finds
It’s dreaded by moms-to-be, but morning sickness is actually a good sign — for the baby, a U.S. government study shows, confirming common pregnancy lore and less-rigorous research.
Women with nausea early in pregnancy were half as likely to have miscarriages and stillbirths as those who sailed through the first few months.
Miscarriages were also less common in women who had nausea plus vomiting, although the benefit was stronger for those who just had nausea.
Led by researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the study involved almost 800 women who had had at least one miscarriage and then became pregnant again.
They were asked to record symptoms in daily diaries for the first eight weeks of pregnancy and in monthly questionnaires through the end of the first trimester.
Stefanie Hinkle, the lead author and a researcher at the national institute, called it the most rigorous study to date on the topic, but also noted that it’s unclear if the results would apply to first-time pregnancies.
Results were published last week in JAMA Internal Medicine. Change teens can believe in New research suggests teens can learn to better deal with the stress and insecurity that comes with the first year of high school.
David S. Yeager, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and a leading voice in the growing effort to help college students stay in school, lead a study, published in the journal Psychological Science, that found a surprisingly effective technique. At the beginning of the school year, students participated in a reading and writing exercise intended to instill a basic, almost banal message to help them manage tension: people can change.
The students who completed the exercise subsequently had lower levels of stress, reported more confidence in coping and achieved slightly higher grades at year’s end, compared to a control group. These results were measured through the students’ self-reporting in online diaries and through cardiovascular and hormone measurements.
The studies are small. Recruited from the Rochester, N.Y. area, 60 students participated in the first trial; the second involved 205 ninth-graders from a high school in suburban Austin, Texas. In 2017, researchers will try to reproduce these results on a larger scale, in 25 high schools across the U.S. Research links caffeine and dementia prevention A new study suggests a significant relationship between caffeine and dementia prevention, though it stops short of establishing cause and effect.
The study, published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, found higher caffeine intake in women age 65 and older was associated with reduced odds of developing de- mentia or cognitive impairment. Among the 6,467 women in the study, self-reported caffeine consumption of more than 261 milligrams of caffeine was associated with a 36-per-cent reduction in the risk of dementia over 10 years of followup. That level is equivalent to two to three 8-ounce (237 mL) cups of coffee per day, five to six 8-ounce cups of black tea, or seven to eight 12-ounce (350 mL) cans of cola.
“While we can’t make a direct link between higher caffeine consumption and lower incidence of cognitive impairment and dementia, with further study we can better quantify its relationship with cognitive health outcomes,” said Ira Driscoll, the study’s lead author and a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Researchers know that caffeine binds to pre-existing adenosine receptors in the brain, so the findings point to a potential mechanism worth further exploring to determine a causative effect, Driscoll told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Zika has mild effect on children, study finds A first look at U.S. teens and young children who were infected with Zika suggests the virus typically causes at worst only a mild illness.
Zika infection during pregnancy can cause severe brain-related birth defects. But the report seems to confirm health officials’ belief that in- fections after birth in children are similar to infections in adults — most people don’t feel sick and some develop only mild symptoms such as fever, rash, joint pain and red eyes.
Some experts say there’s not enough data to answer questions about the virus’s potential impact on the developing brains of infants and small children, however.
The report, released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is based on 158 infections from earlier this year in children aged from one month to 17 years.
All the children picked up the virus while travelling abroad and the bulk of them were in their teens. Only 16 were age four or younger and only four were under a year old.