Half of all stillbirths result from pregnancy disorders and conditions that affect the placenta, according to a new report. Risk factors already known at the start of pregnancy—such as previous pregnancy loss or obesity—accounted for only a small proportion of the overall risk of stillbirth.

Women who worked a rotating night shift had an increased risk of type 2 diabetes that was not completely explained by an increase in body mass index (BMI), according to results of a prospective study of women who were enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Studies.  Nurses who had 1 to 10 years of night shift work  saw a 5% excess risk for type 2 diabetes compared to women who did minimal to no night shift work. That risk climbed to 40% after a decade of shift work, according to Frank Hu, MD, PhD, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard School of Medicine in Boston, and colleagues.

While mammograms certainly play an important role in the early detection of breast cancer (and women have responded to this selling point), when weighed against other issues related to quality of life, this benefit  becomes the question of debate among the scientific community.  While researchers have ways to measure quality of life via quality-adjusted life years (QALYS), how do women measure quality of life?  Some recent research done in the UK has caught my attention that found:    after 10 years of mammograms, a woman may get more harm than good from the screening.