Mother and Child

Most pregnant women with well-controlled diabetes give birth to healthy children. But their babies run much higher risks of birth defects than babies born to women without diabetes, because very early in embryonic development, the babies are exposed to higher levels of glucose in maternal blood. If glucosamine performs similarly in humans, understanding its role eventually may aid in avoiding birth defects, says Mary Loeken, Ph.D., an Investigator in the Section on Islet and Regenerative Cell Biology at Joslin Diabetes Center and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Moreover, her work suggests an approach to developing stem cells that might help to strengthen future regenerative therapies for many diseases. "The implications of this research go beyond the diabetic population," says Dr. Loeken, senior author on a paper published earlier this month in  Science Reports . Dr. Loeken, who studies how diabetes drives changes in the early embryo ...

Across the world, many schoolchildren under 10 are overweight. In the search for the cause of this phenomenon, fetal programming was put under scrutiny in new research. That the mother's diet might have some influence could not be confirmed in a long-term study: administering a special diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids to pregnant women neither resulted in children being slimmer nor fatter than their counterparts from the control group whose mothers ate a normal diet. Up to now, the general consensus had been that "bad" fats, especially omega-6 fatty acids, consumed during pregnancy increased the formation of infantile fat cells, while "good" omega-3 fatty acids protected the child against becoming overweight. Since, in the animal model, an increased intake of omega-3 fatty acids during pregnancy and lactation coupled with a simultaneous reduction in arachidonic acids resulted in offspring with a significantly lower tendency to become overweight, the INFA...

Taraba State governor, Darius Ishaku has said that his administration will not relent in the efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality in the state. Ishaku, who stated this yesterday in Jalingo during the occasion of the flag-off ceremony for the maternal newborn and child health week said the state government has put in place clear-cut policies and programmes for the provision of maternal and child health care. “I am pleased to address this gathering on this occasion of the flag-off of the maternal and child health week, this is significant since it is concerned with the lives and wellbeing of mothers and children across the 16 local government areas of the state,” he said. Ishaku, who was represented by his deputy, Haruna Manu informed  that the service which is free will take place at designated health centres across the state. He called on parents to ensure that this year’s campaign records a higher turnout than the previous ones. He urged the Ministry of Health...

Offering insights into a long-standing and mysterious bias in biology, a new study reveals how and why mitochondria are only passed on through a mother's egg -- and not the father's sperm. Harbored inside the cells of nearly all multicellular animals, plants and fungi are mitochondria, organelles that play an important role in generating the energy that cells need to survive. Shortly after a sperm penetrates an egg during fertilization, the sperm's mitochondria are degraded while the egg's mitochondria persist.  To gain more insights into this highly specific degradation pattern, Qinghua Zhou et al. used electron microscopy and tomography to study sperm mitochondria (or paternal mitochondria) in Caenorhabditis elegans, a type of roundworm, during early stages of development. Intriguingly, the paternal mitochondria were found to partially self-destruct before the mitochondria were surrounded by autophagosomes, which target components within a cell and fac...

A recent study found that that sperm of men who smoke has a greater extent of DNA damage than that of non-smokers. Researchers also assessed 422 proteins in participants' sperm. One protein was absent, 27 proteins were underrepresented, and 6 proteins were over-represented in smokers. Analyses of these proteins suggest that cigarette smoking may promote an inflammatory response in the male reproductive tract. The BJU International study included 20 nonsmoking men and 20 men who smoked. "More and more studies are demonstrating a harmful effect of smoking on male fertility. Our results point in the direction of important semen alterations: semen of smokers presents an inflammatory nature, associated with decreased capacity of sperm to achieve fertilization and generate a healthy pregnancy," said Dr. Ricardo Pimenta Bertolla, senior author of the study. "It is especially noteworthy that, in our study, sperm DNA fragmentation was increased. Other studies have ...

An international team of researchers has discovered a simple, accurate new way to predict which women with gestational diabetes will develop type 2 diabetes after delivery. The discovery would allow health care providers to identify women at greatest risk and help motivate women to make early lifestyle changes and follow other strategies that could prevent them from developing the disease later in life. Gestational diabetes is defined as glucose intolerance that is first identified during pregnancy. It occurs in three to 13 percent of all pregnant women, and increases a woman's risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 20 to 50 percent within five years after pregnancy. The joint efforts of the University of Toronto's Michael Wheeler, a professor in the Department of Physiology, and Erica Gunderson, Senior Research Scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research, led to development of a technique called targeted metabolomics to better predi...

Mrs. Chinasa a big business owner tells story of her fibroid pains and the recent surgery for the removal which she thought was her last option. She used this medium to advice ladies who are going through such pains. “I choose to tell you my story today. Number one, I keep everything in my life under wraps because of the negativity out there. 90 percent of my life doesn’t make it to the Internet. I’ve been through a lot in my life but I’ll let you read all the truth in my book and watch on my reality show “Building Your Business”. A lot of people send me DMs and emails saying how perfect I am, how they want to be like me, how strong I am; Asking how I manage to run 20 businesses and take care of my 2 kids at the same time. I promised myself to always keep going to encourage the people I inspire. This powerful strong woman you see is not perfect. I have my pains and I cry too, especially when I’m misjudged. I have been betrayed and stabbed in the back severally by...

Postpartum depression -- a household term since actress Brooke Shields went public in 2005 about her struggle with it -- is indeed serious. But depression that begins before or during pregnancy is often more severe because it lasts longer and usually goes undetected until the doctor screens for it after the birth of the baby, according to a new study. Deciphering the onset time can impact how the doctor treats the woman's depression, such as intervening earlier with psychiatric help, if needed, said Sheehan Fisher, the study's corresponding author and an instructor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "There's a difference between postpartum depression and depression that started before or during the pregnancy. It's not a homogenous disorder, " Fisher said. "When clinicians see a mother during the postpartum period and diagnose her with depression, it's important for them to ask how lo...

Scientists can interfere with sperm production in the parasitic blood fluke Schistosoma mansoni by blocking expression of the Nuclear Factor Y-B gene (NF-YB).             The population of stem cells that develop into sperm, called spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs), must continually renew themselves, while also differentiating into mature sperm.  Too much self-renewal can create tumors and defects in differentiation can lead to infertility through malformed sperm.  To better understand how SSCs maintain this balance, the scientists investigated the role of the NF-YB gene in stem cell production in the freshwater planarian,  Schmidtea mediterranea .  Previously, the NF-Y family of transcription factor had been shown to play a role in germ cell development in the planarian. Using RNA interference, the researchers lowered the expression of the gene and showed that it is necessary for SSC proliferation.  They repeated ...

Cannabis use during pregnancy is associated with abnormal brain structure in children, according to a new study. Compared with unexposed children, those who were prenatally exposed to cannabis had a thicker prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain involved in complex cognition, decision-making, and working memory.                      Marijuana Compared with unexposed children, those who were prenatally exposed to cannabis had a thicker prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain involved in complex cognition, decision-making, and working memory. Author of the study Dr. Hanan El Marroun, of Erasmus University Medical Center in The Netherlands, said: "this study is important because cannabis use during pregnancy is relatively common and we know very little about the potential consequences of cannabis exposure during pregnancy and brain development later in life." An estimated 2-13% of women worldwide use cannabis d...