Mom’s drinking tied to infant deaths
Increased risk of SIDS
NEW YORK, Feb 27, (RTRS): About one in six sudden infant deaths may be linked to heavy alcohol use by their mothers during or soon after pregnancy, according to an Australian study.
Researchers writing in Pediatrics found that those deaths may result from babies being exposed to alcohol in the womb and from alcohol-using mothers creating hazardous environments for the babies after birth.
“The results of this study indicate that maternal alcohol-use disorder increases the risk of SIDS and (infant deaths) through direct effects on the fetus and indirectly through environmental risk factors,” wrote researchers led by Colleen O’Leary from Curtin University in Perth, Australia.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) as the death of a child under one year old with no obvious cause. Approximately 4,500 infant deaths fall into this category every year in the United States, according to the CDC.
Previously, researchers have tied SIDS to parents’ smoking and to unsafe environments, but few studies have looked at whether alcohol could be involved in some of the deaths.
The study team examined information on 77,895 women who gave birth between 1983 and 2005, comparing the number of SIDS and infant deaths that authors note, because those cancers are somewhat more responsive to treatment and have longer average survival rates in general.
Still, metastatic cancer is the most dangers kind, with fewer than one-third of women surviving at least five years after diagnosis, Johnson’s team wrote. Cancer But surgeon Julie Margenthaler, who has studied breast cancer in young women at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said the new study was limited by a lack of data on women’s family history, including which ones were carriers of BRCA gene mutations. FDA approves: US health regulators said on Tuesday in Washington, they have approved a drug made by Japan’s Shionogi occurred in children of mothers with a diagnosed drinking problem, to cases among the children of mothers without a diagnosis.
Overall, 171 SIDS cases occurred during that time in children born to the 21,841 women who were diagnosed heavy drinkers. Among the children who were born to 56,054 mothers without a diagnosis, there were 132 SIDS cases.
The researchers found that children born to mothers who drank heavily during pregnancy had a seven-fold increase in the risk of SIDS, compared to children of mothers without a drinking problem.
Babies also had a nine-fold increased risk of SIDS when their mothers drank within the year after birth, compared to babies born to mothers who didn’t drink.
“One of the morals of the story is that parents should be very careful about drinking alcohol, especially if you’re a single parent because there is no other parent to back you up,” said David Phillips, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied alcohol-related infant deaths but wasn’t involved in the story.
O’Leary and her colleagues, who could not be reached for comment, also report that heavy drinking during pregnancy was tied to a doubled risk of infants dying from a cause unrelated to SIDS, compared to babies of mothers who were not heavy drinkers.
Women with those mutations are known to be at high risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer at a young age.
“It is intriguing data, but I think that it’s going to have to be validated in some other datasets,” said Margenthaler, who was not involved in the new research.
Both she and Johnson agreed that since the number of women involved is still small, there’s no need for the findings to either cause alarm or change standard mammogram practices.
Johnson said women should still be aware that cancer can happen at an early age, even if screening isn’t recommended. & Co to treat women experiencing pain during sexual intercourse.
The US Food and Drug Administration approved the drug, Osphena, for a type of pain known as dyspareunia.
Dyspareunia is associated with declining levels of estrogen hormones during menopause.
Osphena, known chemically as ospemifene, is a pill that acts like estrogen to make them thicker and less fragile, resulting in a reduction in pain associated with intercourse. (RTRS) Bid to tackle ‘gonorrhoea’: Cases of gonorrhoea have soared 25 percent in a year as experts warn Wednesday the disease is becoming more resistant to treatment.
The spike has led to the launch of a new campaign to tackle the growing threat in England and Wales.
Cases of the sexually transmitted infection (STI) jumped by a quarter in 2011 amid an emerging resistance to treatment and an absence of new therapeutic options in the last decade, the health authorities said.
The health experts are hoping the first Gonorrhoea Resistance Action Plan will increase awareness of the disease, which is the second most common bacterial STI in England. (KUNA)