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Prenatal alcohol drinking linked to childhood brain development

Heavy drinking during pregnancy disrupts proper brain development in children and adolescents years after they were exposed to alcohol in the womb, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health. The study is the first to track children over several years to examine how heavy exposure to alcohol in utero affects brain growth over time.

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, researchers found that brain growth patterns in children whose mothers drank heavily while pregnant differed from normal patterns of development seen in children who were not exposed to alcohol before birth.

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Time to get off your &%#*! Break the sitting habit!

Women who exercise regularly spend as much time sitting as women who don’t, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study. Emerging research shows that prolonged sitting has significant health consequences that even being a dedicated exerciser doesn’t prevent women from spending too much of their day sitting.

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The Morning After: Women, the Vote, and Reproductive Health

Yesterday morning we awoke to a political landscape that seems jarred by the process of democracy, but ready to move forward as a nation.  Three issues defined the outcome:  the percent of women who chose democratic principles; the resounding losses by candidates who are antiquated in their thinking about pregnancy, in particular; and, the need to hold all of us accountable as citizens in the care of each other starting at the research bench to the bedside.   I’m a reproductive scientist and direct the Women’s Health Research Institute at Northwestern University, so these issues are my issues and it is now time to look forward and identi

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Beware of on-line pharmacies

Ninety seven percent of online pharmacies don’t follow U.S. pharmacy laws. If you buy from one of these online pharmacies, you run a high risk of receiving counterfeit or substandard drugs. You also put your personal and financial information at risk.

Beware of an online pharmacy that shows these signs of being fake:

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Institute pushes for changes to federal reproductive health research

A team of Northwestern University scientists including a member of our Institute team met October 18, with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)in Washington, D.C., to advocate for important changes in the agency’s guidelines for reproductive health research.

“The problem is current research assessing the risk of toxins on reproductive health is not being uniformly investigated in both sexes and across the lifespan,” said Kate Timmerman, program director of the Oncofertility Consortium at Northwestern University. The reproductive health guidelines have not been updated since 1996 and need to be revised to reflect new research findings.

The Northwestern team asked the EPA to expand the definition of reproductive health beyond pregnancy to include the lifespan of an individual.

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Benefits and risks of incontinence treatments

Oral medication for treating a type of incontinence in women is roughly as effective as Botox injections to the bladder, reported researchers who conducted a National Institutes of Health clinical trials network study, with each form of treatment having benefits and limitations.

After six months, women in both treatment groups said that the average number of daily episodes had declined from about five per day to about 1-2 per day.

Original Article

Sexually abused women skip pap smears

A recent study reported that girls who were sexually abused often avoid cervical cancer screenings as adults.  Not surprising, most of the girls who completed the study survey avoid the screening test not just because of embarrassment of being abused, but because of physical scars of abuse that would be seen by the screener.  For an in-depth review of this issue and recommendations for health providers who provide these tests, we’ve included a Download Complimentary Source PDF 

 

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