Giving Birth To A Boy Is More Likely To Reduce Quality Of Life And Increase Severe Post-Natal Depression

Giving birth to a boy can lead to higher levels of severe post-natal depression (PND)
and reduced quality of life than having a girl, according to research published in the
February issue of Journal of Clinical Nursing.


A team of researchers led by Professor Claude de Tychey, from Universite Nancy 2,
France, found that just under a third of the 181 women they studied four to eight
weeks after delivery had PND.


Nine per cent of the women in the study - carried out in a French community where
they didn't face cultural pressures over the sex of their baby - had severe PND and
just over three-quarters of those had given birth to boys.


The team also discovered that, even if women didn't have postnatal depression,
giving birth to a boy was significantly more likely to reduce their quality of life than
delivering a girl.


"Post-natal depression is very common and poses a major public health problem,
especially if it is not diagnosed and treated" stresses Professor de Tychey.


"When we launched our research, our main aim was to study the effect that gender
has on PND. But the overwhelming finding of the study was the fact that gender
appears to play a significant role in reduced quality of life as well as an increased
chance of severe PND."


The researchers measured the women's quality of life using a validated
questionnaire containing 36 questions. This asked the women to score eight
dimensions of their health - physical functioning, physical role, bodily pain, mental
health, emotional role, social functioning, vitality and general health - using a 100-
point scale.


The results were then collated into male and female births and whether the woman
had no, mild or severe PND. Scores were also calculated for their overall physical
and mental health. This provided 60 separate quality of life scores.


When the researchers looked at overall results they discovered that:


- Women who had given birth to a boy reported lower quality of life scores in 70
per cent of cases compared with women who had delivered a girl, regardless
of whether they suffered from PND.


- When the 10 quality of life scores were added together in each category,
women who had no PND had the highest quality of life scores - 713 points for
women who had given birth to girls and 648 for women who had delivered
boys.


- When the researchers looked at women with PND, they found higher quality
of life scores for women who had delivered girls - 567 if the PND was mild
and 541 if it was severe. Women who had delivered boys scored lower totals
of 539 if the PND was mild and 498 if it was severe.


The figures also enabled the researchers to compare the gender differences for
women with no, mild and severe PND. This showed that:















- Gender differences were greatest in women who had no PND. If they had
given birth to a boy they had lower quality of life scores in 90 per cent of
categories than those who had delivered girls.


- Women with PND also reported lower quality of life scores if they had had a
boy - these were lower in 50 per cent of categories if the PND was mild and
in 70 per cent of categories if the PND was severe.


"These figures show very clearly that having a boy resulted in lower quality of life
scores in all cases" says Professor de Tychey.


"We also discovered that being a first-time mother had no effect on quality of life
scores. Women had the same general scores regardless of whether the recent birth
was their first or second baby."


Just over half of the women who took part (52 per cent) had given birth to boys. 61
per cent of the babies included in the study were first babies (55 boys and 56 girls)
and the remainder were second babies.


Women having their second baby were slightly more likely to have had a girl the first
time around (59 per cent). The women's ages ranged from 19 to 40 and averaged
29.


"Post-natal depression can have a considerable impact on women as it can affect
both their physical and mental health" stresses Professor de Tychey.


"Previous studies have shown that women who live in cultures where greater value is
placed on sons are more likely to suffer from PND if they give birth to a girl.


"However, we believe that this study - carried out in a French community where
women didn't face cultural pressures over the sex of their baby - is the first to show
that women who give birth to boys are more likely to suffer from severe PND and
reduced quality of life. Further research is needed to find out why this happens.
"We believe that our findings have important public health consequences, as they
point to the need for developing prevention and early psychotherapeutic
programmes for women giving birth to boys."


Notes


- Quality of life, postnatal depression and baby gender. de Tychey et al. Journal of
Clinical Nursing. 17.3, 312-322. (February 2008).


- Founded in 1992, Journal of Clinical Nursing is a highly regarded peer reviewed
Journal that has a truly international readership. The Journal embraces experienced
clinical nurses, student nurses and health professionals, who support, inform and
investigate nursing practice. It enlightens, educates, explores, debates and
challenges the foundations of clinical health care knowledge and practice worldwide.
Edited by Professor Roger Watson, it is published 10 times a year by Blackwell
Publishing Ltd, part of the international Blackwell Publishing group.
blackwellpublishing/jcn


- About Wiley-Blackwell
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blackwellpublishing or interscience.wiley.

IVF Success Enhanced By New Method Of Assessing Women's Eggs

Many couples who have trouble conceiving a child have turned to a process known as in vitro fertilization. The resulting embryos are then transferred back into the woman or placed in storage. More than 400,000 embryos are currently in storage in the United States. The quality of the egg is often the single greatest factor in the viability of the embryo, yet fertility experts lack a good method for assessing the eggs.



Barry Behr, PhD, HCLD, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Stanford University School of Medicine and director of Stanford's IVF laboratory, recently published findings on a way to "profile" the eggs to determine which are more likely to result in pregnancies.



The question:



Can a non-invasive test of a woman's eggs be used to predict in vitro fertilization success?



Background:



In vitro fertilization involves retrieving eggs from a woman's ovaries and fertilizing the eggs in a dish by incubating them with sperm or injecting sperm directly into them. The resulting embryos are then transferred back into the woman or placed in storage. The quality of the egg is often the single biggest determinant in the viability of the embryo.



The need:


There is currently no good tool to available to assess eggs. "We would stand on our head and hop on our left leg if we could find a way to give us some information about viability of embryo," said Behr.



The technology:



Metabolomic testing reveals trace molecules remaining after an array of cellular processes. Previous studies have shown that metabolomic profiling can be used to identify unique biomarkers left behind by embryos in culture, which foretell the embryos with the highest reproductive potential in IVF. "Think of it as a sort of smog test for the embryo," said Behr. "It tells you how clean the engine is burning, and whether there are any problems."



The study:



The study involved extracting eggs from 43 women, incubating them in culture for three hours and then examining their metabolomic results before fertilization. The researchers then documented what happened to each egg: Whether it was fertilized, the quality of the resulting embryo on days three and five, and whether it led to a successful pregnancy.



Publication:



The study appeared in the February issue of Reproductive Biomedicine Online. Behr is the senior author; Jennifer Dasig, an embryologist at Stanford, is one of the co-authors.



The findings:



The researchers established a correlation between the number of particular trace elements left behind by the eggs and both embryo viability and pregnancy rates. "This shows we can predict embryo development and viability from the egg," said Behr.



What's next:



This is the first study to demonstrate that metabolomic profiling of the egg can generate important information about the resulting embryo. More studies are needed to confirm the results and to test in greater numbers.



Implications:



If future studies confirm these results, the test could someday be used to predict the success of IVF and help determine which eggs should be selected for fertilization or to be frozen, Behr said. Using only the best-quality eggs would lead to the creation of fewer embryos and eliminate the need to keep large quantities of embryos in storage. This could also help doctors avoid the practice of implanting numerous embryos into a woman, which sometimes leads to the birth of twins, triplets and higher-order multiples.



Notes:




Disclosure:



Behr is on the scientific advisory board of Molecular Biometrics, which funded the study.



The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top 10 medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.



Source: Michelle Brandt


Stanford University Medical Center

Prevalence Of Positive Potassium Sensitivity Test Which Is An Indicator Of Bladder Epithelial Permeability Dysfunction In A Fixed Group Of Women

UroToday - Intravesical Potassium Chloride Screening Positive In 32.8% of Female Turkish Textile Workers


How many unselected women in a population would have a BPS/IC if one considers a positive KCl test as a definitive standard? Six years ago Parsons answered this question for an American population1, determining that 74% of women with a pelvic pain, frequency, urgency scale (PUF) of 10-14 will have a positive potassium test. Based on PUF scores in medical students attending his lectures in San Diego, he reported a prevalence of possible interstitial cystitis in the young adult female population of up to 22%.


Sahinkanat and colleagues in Kahraman Maras, Turkey gave the PUF questionnaire to all female workers in two textile factories, and then took volunteers from groups with "positive" and "negative" PUF scores and administered Parson's standard intravesical potassium test. In this study, the results were even more startling. Over 38% of female textile workers had a positive PUF score, in this case defined as >7. The rate of positive potassium sensitivity testing (PST) in this group was 86.2%. In the group with a PUF less than 7, positive PST testing occurred in 9.1%. The authors estimate that 32.8% of the women in Turkey would have a positive potassium sensitivity test based on their data. Parsons, using similar parameters in unselected female medical students, calculated 30.6% had probable interstitial cystitis2.


The values calculated on the basis of the PUF questionnaire and potassium sensitivity testing for the prevalence of BPS/IC are 100 times those of recent population based studies using the O'Leary-Sant Interstitial Cystitis Symptom Score3, 4 The results certainly seem to lack a certain degree of face validity to this reviewer, yet are very provocative. Just what the PUF scale and potassium sensitivity test are identifying remains to be fully elucidated.


Tayfun Sahinkanata, Alanur G??venb, Hasan Ekerbicerc, Murat Arald


Reference List



(1) Parsons CL, Dell J, Stanford EJ et al. Increased prevalence of interstitial cystitis: previously unrecognized urologic and gynecologic cases identified using a new symptom questionnaire and intravesical potassium sensitivity. Urology 2002 October;60(4):573-8.



(2) Parsons CL, Tatsis V. Prevalence of interstitial cystitis in young women. Urology 2004 November;64(5):866-70.



(3) Leppilahti M, Sairanen J, Tammela TL, Aaltomaa S, Lehtoranta K, Auvinen A. Prevalence of clinically confirmed interstitial cystitis in women: a population based study in Finland. J Urol 2005 August;174(2):581-3.



(4) Temml C, Wehrberger C, Riedl C, Ponholzer A, Marszalek M, Madersbacher S. Prevalence and correlates for interstitial cystitis symptoms in women participating in a health screening project. Eur Urol 2007 March;51(3):803-8.


Urol Int 2008;80:52-56 Epub

doi: 10.1159/000111730


Reported by UroToday Contributing Editor Philip M. Hanno, MD, MPH Professor of Urology Division of Urology, Department of Surgery Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Medical Director Department of Clinical Effectiveness and Quality Improvement University of Pennsylvania Health System Philadelphia, PA


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Ill. Gov. Blagojevich Announces Expansion Of No-Cost Breast, Cervical Cancer Screening Program For Uninsured Women

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) on Sunday announced that the income eligibility limit for the Illinois Department of Public Health's Breast and Cervical Cancer Program -- which provides some uninsured women with no-cost screenings for the cancers -- will be raised from 200% to 250% of the federal poverty level, the Edwardsville Intelligencer reports (Capel, Edwardsville Intelligencer, 5/16). The program provides eligible women between the ages of 40 and 64 with mammograms and breast exams at no cost, and it provides eligible women between the ages of 35 and 64 with no-cost pelvic exams and Pap tests (Chicago Sun-Times, 5/15). Uninsured younger women who have annual incomes too high to qualify but show symptoms of breast or cervical cancer also can be considered for the program on a case-by-case basis (Belleville News-Democrat, 5/15). Blagojevich's plan also allows eligible women who were diagnosed with cancer outside the program to receive treatment services at no cost. Such women previously were not allowed to participate. The recently approved state budget includes $3.6 million in new funding and $2 million in federal funding for the program. The program has provided about 150,000 breast and cervical cancer screenings since 1995, and 425 women currently are enrolled in the program (Blagojevich release, 5/14).


"Reprinted with permission from kaisernetwork. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at kaisernetwork/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.